
Glass __ r £~. 

Book HR. 



FfftL 



By bequest of 

William Lukens Shoemaker 



THE WORKS OF THE RIGHT HON 
JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE 

VOLUME I 



r 



THE WORKS 

OF THE RIGHT HONOURABLE 

JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE 

IN VERSE AND PROSE 

VOLUME I 
MEMOIR BY THE RIGHT HON. SIR BARTLE FRERE 

.geronb Cbftfon ftebigeb taitfj SCbbitiong 




NEW YORK 
A. DENHAM AND CO. 

LONDON BASIL MONTAGU PICKERING 
MDCCC LXXIV 






Gift. 

W. L. Shoemaker 

J S '06 





EDITORS' PREFACE. 

N 1867, Mr. Pickering had prepared for 
republication all of Mr. Hookham Frere's 
literary remains which he could collect. 
Some of the works were in type when he 
applied to the author's family for their aid in making 
the collection as complete as possible, and also in 
correcting a biographical sketch which had already 
been printed. 

It then appeared that, besides the works acces- 
sible to Mr. Pickering, there were others of con- 
siderable length and importance which had never 
been printed or published. 

Mr. Pickering thereupon placed the whole of the 
materials he had collected at the disposal of Mr. 
Frere, of Roydon Hall, Norfolk, Mr. Hookham 
Frere's heir, and the present head of the family. 

At his request, and on his behalf, two of his 
brothers, who had just then returned from India, 
undertook to do their best towards carrying out 
Mr. Pickering's design. Mr. W. E. Frere engaged 
to collect and prepare for the Press all that could 



vi PREFA CE. 

now be recovered of his uncle's Works, and the 
biographical sketch prefixed to them has been 
drawn up by Sir Bartle Frere. 

Both felt that, other deficiencies apart, thirty-five 
years of active service in the Tropics, chiefly passed 
at a distance from all literary and political society, 
and far away from such books, as well as from such 
men, as were Mr. Hookham Frere's companions, 
formed but a bad preparation for the task. 

Time had, however, spared few of those who, by 
personal knowledge and love for the subject, as well 
as by similarity of tastes and scholarship, were best 
fitted for the duty. Of Mr. Hookham Frere's early 
friends or associates not one remained who could be 
asked to aid ; and even those who had known him 
intimately, in the latter years of his comparative 
retirement at Malta, were rapidly passing away. 

Under these circumstances, none better qualified 
being able or willing to undertake the task, the ad- 
vantage of having passed some time under his roof, 
and in daily intercourse with him, in 1834, 1 841-4-5-6, 
may in some degree compensate for the faults of in- 
sufficient or rusty scholarship ; and it is hoped that 
the spirit of filial love in which the work has been 
undertaken, will make up for serious defects which 
would not have existed had it been entrusted to 
abler hands. 

Mr. Frere had, in his latter years, a great dislike 
to the mechanical task of writing, and much that he 
had composed found no record save in the memory 
of the few associates of his retired and almost re- 
cluse life. Owing to circumstances which need not 
here be detailed, very few of the letters which he 
received from his political or literary friends are 



PREFACE. vii 

now forthcoming. Some scattered notices remain 
of remarks or conversations which happen so to 
have struck the hearer, that they were written 
down at the time; but shipwreck and other acci- 
dents have caused the loss of many of these imper- 
fect records. 

With such scanty materials at command, it can 
hardly be hoped that the result will be satisfactory 
to the few now surviving who were amongst his 
personal friends ; or who know him by the esti- 
mation in which he was held by such authorities in 
politics and literature as Canning and Cornewall 
Lewis, Coleridge, Southey, and Scott. 

But the Editors trust that scholars and men of 
letters may find among the fragmentary additions 
to the collected works, however imperfectly edited, 
some ground for rejoicing that even these brief 
records have not been allowed to perish ; and though 
the Memoir bears unavoidable traces of the diffi- 
culty experienced in converting what was begun as 
a simple family record into a sketch of Mr. Frere's 
political and literary life, all readers may find some- 
thing to interest them in these memorials of one 
who Coleridge thought eminently deserved to be 
characterized as b xaXoKayaSbg b (piXoKaXog. 1 

1 Coleridge's Will. Athenaeum, No. 365. 




MEMOIR. 




iOHN HOOKHAM FRERE was born 
in London on the 21st May, 1769. He 
came of an ancient stock, long settled 
in the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk. 
A recent French genealogist, writing 
of those families whose ancestors accompanied the 
Conqueror from Normandy, professes to find among 
them the founders of the family of the Suffolk 
Freres. He traces them to a certain Richard le 
Frere and his son John, who followed the banner of 
Robert, son of William Mallett, one of the great 
nobles who fought under the Conqueror at Hastings. 
This Robert founded a priory at Eye in Suffolk, in 
the records of which mention is said to be made of 
John Le Frere, as " Vavasseur " and tenant of lands 
in Eye. 

On similar evidence the same author identifies 
with the descendants of this Richard, many of the 
name of Frere, or Le Frere, who are found men- 
tioned in ancient charters and deeds connected with 
grants of land in other of the eastern and midland 
counties. 1 

From John Frere, who lived at Thurston, in Suf- 



1 In pedigrees and deeds relating to land in Norfolk and 
Suffolk, in the 12th and 13th centuries, the name, it is said, is 
generally written " Le Frere." But in the third year of Ed. 

B 

u 



2 MEMOIR OF 

folk, in 1268, there is connected and well-authenti- 
cated evidence of successive generations who held 
lands and bore arms in Suffolk, (at Wickham Abbey, 
Wickham JSkeith, Occold, and Sweffling,) and inter- 
married with various families of landed gentry in 
that and the adjoining counties. 1 

Many Freres of previous generations had been 
buried at or near Finningham, in Suffolk, where a 
farm called the " Green Farm " was purchased by 
them in 1598, when the manor and advowson, which 
still belong to the family, were purchased of Mr. 
Lambe in 1656, and the hall and lands from the 

III. (a. D. 1330), "John Frere" is recorded by local anti- 
quaries as having given to the Prior and Brothers of the 
Carmelites at Synterle (?) in Norfolk, certain lands there for 
the enlargement of the Manse. Twenty-two years later, 
" Thos. Frere," described as " Citizen and Fishmonger of 
London," gave land in the City of London to John Baud, 
Parson of the Church of St. Nicholas of Colne Abbey. In 
later times the Suffolk branch of the family dropped the 
Norman article. 

Some of these East Anglian Le Freres held lands near 
Sawbridgeworth as early as 1 197, when it is recorded that, 
on the day after the feast of St. Mark, in the ninth year of 
King Richard I., Richard le Frere obtained, on a plea brought 
before the King's Justices at Westminster from Henstac and 
others, two virgates of land in Sawbridgeworth, paying there- 
for \os. sterling; and twenty-three years later Walter le Frere 
and his wife, with others, sold half a virgate of land in the 
same township for one marc. About a century later, in 131 3, 
William le Frere is recorded to have bought a messuage, 
twenty-one acres of land, and half an acre of pasture in Saw- 
bridgeworth " for a hawk." 

This branch of the family, with the name anglicised, held 
lands in the same parish and its neighbourhood up to the 
last century. 

In the records of the 16th and 17th centuries, the name of 
all branches of the family is variously spelt as Frere, Fryer, 
and Frier. 

1 The family seems to have shared the passion for foreign 
adventure and travel which possessed so many Englishmen 
in the days of Elizabeth and her successors. 

The name of John Frier is found among the original 215 
adventurers to whom the first charter constituting the East 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 3 

Cottons in 1657, by John Frere. He died in 1679, 
and for several generations after him his descend- 
ants lived at Thwait Hall, near Finningham, till his 
great grandson purchased Roydon Hall, near Diss, 
in Norfolk. 

Mr. Hookham Frere's very just estimate of his 
own obligations to such ancestry may be gathered 
from his reply to a request, made to him in his later 
years, that he would write a few lines on his coat-of- 
arms, of which, as having descended from the time 
of their first establishment in the county, the family 

India Company was granted in 1600, and John Fryer, ap- 
parently the same person, subscribed ^240 towards the funds 
of the Company. 

In the next generation Dr. Fryer (whose travels in the East 
Indies between 1672 and 1681, published in 1698, is still one 
of the most graphic books of Eastern travel we have) is 
claimed by the family, though not by the Suffolk branch. 

The Harleston branch, which divided from the main tree 
in the 16th century, moved, in the course of the 17th, almost 
bodily to Barbadoes. In opposition to the politics of the rest 
of the family, they were strong Parliamentarians. One of 
them was a member of the Norfolk Committee for Sequestra- 
tions ; and another, Tobias, is described in some Royalist 
lampoons still extant as a vehement partisan of the Parlia- 
ment. He was member of the Barebones Parliament, and 
was secretary to the Committee of Sequestrations for the 
counties of Norfolk and Suffolk. To this branch probably 
belonged James Frere, the propounder in 1653 of a scheme 
" for transporting vagrants to the foreign plantations." In 
Nov. 1655, John Frere and others, " Merchant adventurers to 
Barbadoes," petitioned the Council of State to the effect " that 
they can procure but 800 firelocks for the 2,000 old musket 
barrels formerly granted out of the Tower stores for the use of 
Barbadoes, and pray that they may pass Custom free." On 
which an order was passed by the Council to Col. Hooper and 
Captain Tobias Frere to ship the firelocks custom free ; and 
the same Captain Tobias, Thomas Frere, and others, obtained 
in the same year, from the Lord Protector, an order for 200 
cases of pistols, 372 carbines, and 600 swords to be delivered 
out of the Tower for the use of Barbadoes. There may still 
possibly be representatives of the family in Barbadoes, where 
members of it have, during the last twft centuries, held various 
offices of honour and responsibility. 



4 MEMOIR OF 

were reasonably proud. The verses were asked for 
by way of preface to a " Parentalia," intended " to 
preserve, in the spirit of the family motto, 1 traces 
of kindred and affinity in the relations of a race, the 
members of which were becoming numerous and 
widely dispersed." 

It was in entire sympathy with this feeling, but 
with some fear lest future family heralds should be 
tempted to lay too much store by mere length of 
descent, unaccompanied by other claims on the 
gratitude of posterity, that Mr. Frere replied by 
sending the following verses : — 

On our Coat of Arms. 2 

The Flanches, on our field of Gules, 

Denote, by known heraldic rules, 

A race contented and obscure, 

In mediocrity secure, 

By sober parsimony thriving, 

For their retired existence striving ; 

By well-judged purchases and matches, 
Far from ambition and debauches ; 
Such was the life our fathers led ; 
Their homely leaven, deep inbred 
In our whole moral composition, 
Confines us to the like condition. 

Among the less remote ancestors of Mr. Hook- 
ham Frere, there were some whose example may be 
supposed to have had considerable influence on the 
formation of his literary tastes. His great grand- 
father Edward, born in 1680, was a Fellow of Trinity 
College, Cambridge, in Bentley's days, and was 

1 " Traditum ab antiquis servare." [The motto " Frere 
ayme Frere " was also used by the family, but it is to the 
former motto that reference is made, here, and in the following 
verses.] 

* Gules, two leopards' faces between flanches, or. It may 
save the tyro in heraldry trouble to warn him that he will 
search the text books in vain for the " known heraldic rules " 
which the poet, following the example of but too many 
modern heralds, invented for his own amusement. 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 5 

probably one of the staunch adherents of the great 
Master in his disputes with the other members of 
the College ; for his name is not appended to the 
petition which was forwarded to the Bishop of Ely 
on the 6th of February, 17 10, while it appears in the 
list of thirty-seven Fellows attached to Bentley's 
reply, which is dated the 13th February in the same 
year. 

Edward Frere's son Sheppard, a Fellow Com- 
moner of Trinity, did not take a degree, but his 
grandson John, Mr. Hookham Frere's father, went 
to Caius College, 1 and had the good fortune of 
contending with Paley for the honours of Senior 
Wrangler in 1763. The story of the contest is told 
with characteristic details by Bishop Watson, who 
was Moderator that year. After recording how, 
when he took his own degree, he had been placed 
Second Wrangler, while in justice he ought to have 
been first, the worthy Bishop relates that when he 
became Moderator, he prevented such partiality for 
the future, by introducing the practice of examining 
rival candidates in the presence of each other, with 
the happy result which he describes in the following 
terms : 2 — 

" The first year I was Moderator, Mr. Paley (after- 
wards known to the world by many excellent pro- 
ductions, though there are some ethical and some 
political principles in his philosophy which I by no 
means approve), and Mr. Frere, a gentleman of 
Norfolk, were examined together. A report pre- 
vailed that Mr. Frere's grandfather" (this was the 
Trinity Fellow of Bentley's days) " would give him 
a thousand pounds if he were Senior Wrangler. 
The other Moderator agreed with me that Mr. 



1 Not Trinity, as inadvertently stated in the first edition 
of this memoir. 

2 " Anecdotes of the Life of Bishop Watson of Llandaff," 
1 818, vol. i. p. 30. 



6 MEMOIR OF 

Paley was his superior, and we made him Senior 
Wrangler. Mr. Frere, much to his honour, on an 
imputation of partiality being thrown on my col- 
league and myself, publicly acknowledged that he 
deserved only the second place, a declaration which 
could never have been made, had they not been 
examined in the presence of each other." 

While Paley was slowly working his way to 
honours far more enduring than any the University 
Moderator could assign him, his competitor had the 
good or bad fortune to succeed to his family estate, 
and thenceforward devoted himself to his duties as 
a country gentleman. In 1768 he married Jane, 
the only child of Mr. John Hookham of Beding- 
ton, a rich London merchant. She brought with 
her, not only fortune and personal beauty, but rare 
gifts of intellect x and disposition. Her own read- 

1 The large collection of her letters, papers, diaries, and 
common-place books, still in the possession of various mem- 
bers of the family, all show her to have been possessed of 
strong and deep religious feeling, a sound judgment, a pas- 
sionately affectionate nature, a ready wit, and a vivacious 
disposition. The following extracts selected from many 
such, with a view rather to their variety than to their literary 
merit, may interest some as proofs of her love for metrical 
composition. 

Eton Epigram Attempted. 
" To holy Henry's fame two Statues rise, 
That bears the Sword, but this the Law supplies, 
There the rude race an iron rule require, 
Here polish'd Law restrains to just desire ; 
Those Tyrants awed, and these revere a King, 
Yet does this change from his own Eton spring ; 
And pious Henry through succeeding reigns 
Spreads that true peace, the Sword's subjection feigns, 
While this fair age reflects reversed his own, 
And Science nurtured here supports the throne, 
So Windsor's Tower on Eton's base shall stand — 
The honour'd guardian of a grateful land. 

2nd Attempt. 
" See Henry to thy name two Statues rise, 
Whose differing emblems fix our gazing eyes — 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 7 

ing in early life had been directed by Mr. William 
Stevens, the intimate friend of Bishop Home and 
of Jones of Nayland, a ripe Greek and Hebrew 
scholar, and one of the most learned laymen of his 
day. The catalogue of books which he drew up 
for the young heiress, and which she seems, from 
her note-books, to have carefully read 'and studied, 
would probably astonish the promoters of modern 
ladies' colleges, by the ponderous though varied 
nature of the reading prescribed, embracing almost 
every branch of what an erudite and pious High 
Churchman of Johnson's days would consider sound 
divinity and history ; in French as well as in Eng- 
lish literature. 



That, a rude race with blazing Falchion awes, 
This, grants a polish'd age benignant laws, 
For our blest time requires no stern controul, 
The yielding passions own the ruling soul ; 
Health, peace, and joy, the smiling region bless, 
The Monarch's is the people's happiness — 
Yet does this change from thy own Eton spring, 
While Science nurtured here supports the King." 

Epitaph. 

" Begun for Mrs. Edwards" 

" You who perhaps with heedless step and eye 
Approach the place where these dear reliques lie, 
Reject not the instructions they impart, 
But let my precepts warn and warm the heart ; 
Warn'd by my woes, let not thy mind elate 
Trust the vain joys of this unstable state — 
One beaming morn the tenderest hope inspired, 
The next, deprived of all my soul desired, 
Saw me, sad victim of relentless fate, 
A childless Parent and a widow'd Mate." 

Composed in sleep, when dreaming that she could not sleep. 

" O come, sweet Sleep, sad nature's soothing nurse, 
The greatest blessing left her at the Curse, 
Not in fantastic form, with motley hues ; 
Come bathe my temple with Lethean dews ; 
Gently incumbent close my willing eyes, 



8 MEMOIR OF 

Mr. Frere was High Sheriff for Suffolk in 1776, 
and in 1799 was elected Member of Parliament for 
Norwich, after a severe contest ; but though a dili- 
gent magistrate, devoting much time to county 
business, he did not neglect the favourite studies of 
his youth. His son used to regret that so few of 
his father's occasional papers had been preserved 

And seal my senses, that those busy spies 
Break not thy stillness with abrupt surprise — 
The Rich or Poor on thy soft lap reclined, 
Equal relief and sure Asylum find." 

In a little book of " Early Efforts " occur the following. 
To a Friend on Her Marriage. 
" Length of Days attend my Dear ; 
Happiness, Friends always near ; 

Health and Pleasure, 

Joy and Treasure, 

Plenty, Peace, 

Love and Ease, 
A good Husband, you Caressing, 
A Hand unseen, you always Blessing ; 
This is the sincere wish of Me — 
Whom Gratitude binds fast to Thee." 

(In this book she says she was careful not to correct any of 
the imperfections she noted in these early efforts at poetry — 
as seeing the faults kept her humble.) 

Description of 

" Always turning, shifting, changing, 
From Folly still to Folly ranging, 
Ever inconstant, roving, unconfined — 
No rein can guide her, and no ties can bind, 
Never to be restrain'd by reason's rule, 
To seem a Wit, she proves herself a Fool." 

It appears to have been her habit to express in verse, spon- 
taneously, the thought of the moment : of such are the fol- 
lowing : — 

Expectation. 
( Waiting for Mr. Frere's return at Roydon.) 
" Swift ye moments, swifter fly, 
Restore him to my longing eye, 
Weary no more my listening ear 
Attentive the wish'd tread to hear, 



JOHN HO OKU AM FEE RE. g 

or published. I have heard my uncle relate with 
much humour a story of his father's learning, when 
he was High Sheriff, that a Whig judge, rather a 
rare phenomenon in those days, was coming on 
circuit to the Norwich assizes ; whereupon the High 
Sheriff, though not much addicted to theological 
composition, sat down and composed a High Tory 



Or catch the well-known voice ; 
As the loved sound approaches nigh — 
• Each Doubt, each Care and Fear shall fly, 
And I again rejoice — " 

The same in Town. 

{Waiting for Mi: Frere to return from the House of 
Commons.) 

" While Coaches rattle, knockers play, 
And Flambeaux cast their glaring ray, 
Each rolling carriage at its sound, 
Makes my impatient Heart rebound, 
With quicken'd pulses throbbing beat ; 
The various noises of the Street — 
The Postman's Bell, the Watchman's Cry, 
Th' attentive Ear does listening try, 
When first the dubious murmurs rise — 
And expectation wings surmise." 

Often little fragments of three or four lines seem rather the 
expression of an overwhelming feeling than any attempt at 
poetical composition. 

Thus on a fragment of paper with the date of her hus- 
band's death are the lines : — 

" O Life ! O Love, together are ye flown ! 
And my heart's treasure thus for ever gone — 
What now awaits me — wheresoe'er I stray, 
A desert, and a solitary way." 

" Out of the Deep have I called unto Thee, O Lord. Lord, 
hear my voice. O let Thine ears consider well the voice of 
my complaint." 

A curious little poem by her great grandmother, preserved 
amongst her papers {vide infra), proves that she was not the 
first of her race possessed of a taste for versification. 



io MEMOIR OF 

sermon, which he got his chaplain to preach before 
the judges. It was pronounced, by those of the 
learned congregation who were not in the secret of 
its composition, to be " an excellent sermon ; much 
better than judges usually got from High Sheriffs' 
Chaplains ;" but whether it did as much to improve 
the political principles of the Whig judge, as to 
confirm his Tory brethren in theirs, was more than 
the real author of the sermon could discover. 

Another anecdote of his Father, which Mr. 
Hookham Frere used to relate was, that one day 
when Bishop Home, attended by his Chaplain 
Jones of Nayland, was staying at Roydon, they 
were told that Wesley was to preach at Diss ; 
both were most anxious to hear him, but both 
doubted the propriety of their attending — there 
was however no such objection to their host going, 
so he went, and on his return wrote down, for their 
edification, a full report of the sermon he had 
heard. 

Mr. Frere was an active member of the Royal 
Society, and of the principal scientific and anti- 
quarian associations in London, and occasionally 
contributed a paper to their transactions, or to the 
" Gentleman's Magazine," then the usual vehicle for 
publishing the less formal and elaborate class of 
scientific or literary compositions. 

One of these papers, written in 1797, possesses 
considerable permanent interest. It is an account 
of some flint implements dug up near Hoxne in 
Suffolk, and was published in the " Archaeologia." l 
This is probably the first notice, in any scientific 
publication, of the remains left by the pre-historic 
races in this country, which have of late years 
attracted so much attention. 

Mr. Frere's only surviving sister, Ellinor, married 
Sir John Fenn, editor of the well-known " Paston 

1 Vol. XIII. 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. n 

Letters," an accomplished and learned antiquary. 
It is possible that from him, or from some of his an- 
tiquarian friends, who were always welcome guests 
at Mr. Frere's house, his son imbibed that taste and 
appreciation for English ballad literature which he 
snowed in his early school-boy days, and for which 
he was remarkable throughout life. 

Lady Fenn 1 was a woman of strong original 
understanding and great accomplishment ; though, 
as she lived at a time when Norfolk was two days' 
tedious journey from London, her influence was 
mainly confined to the small country circle in which 
she moved. 

Speaking of her in her later years, Mr. Hookham 
Frere said, " It is difficult to give any one nowadays 
an idea of the kind of awe which, in my boyhood, 
a learned old lady like her inspired, down in the 
country, not only in us, her nephews and nieces, 
and in those of her own age and rank who could 
understand her intellectual superiority, but even in 
the common people around her. 

" I remember one day, coming from a visit to her, 
I stopped to learn what some village boys outside 
her gate were wrangling about — they were disput- 
ing whether the nation had any reason to be afraid 
of an invasion by Buonaparte, and one of the dis- 
putants said, with a conscious air of superior know- 
ledge — ' I tell ye, ye don't know what a terrible 
fellow he is : why, he don't care for nobody ! If 
he was to come here to Dereham, he wouldn't care 



1 She was herself an authoress of some repute in her own 
day, and in her own line. There are many now living who 
can recollect receiving their first reading-lessons in " Cobwebs 
to catch Flies," and other books for children, which, under 
the names of Mrs. Lovechild and Mrs. Teachwell, she wrote 
for her brother's children and grandchildren, and afterwards 
published. She shares with Mrs. Trimmer and Mrs. Barbauld 
the credit of founding that school of fiction for children in 
which Miss Edgeworth afterwards reigned supreme. 



12 MEMOIR OF 

that,' snapping his fingers ; * no ! not even for Lady 
Fenn, there !'" 

Little that is noteworthy has been preserved of 
Mr. Hookham Frere's early boyhood. The eldest of 
eleven children 1 (eight sons and three daughters), 
he shared in the family migrations from London to 
Roydon in Norfolk, and Bedington in Surrey, 
between which places his parents usually divided 
the year. In 1785, he went from a preparatory 
school at Putney to Eton. The following are 
extracts from notes made in 1844 of some of his 
early recollections. 

He had been speaking of the mistake made by a 
celebrated head master, who tried to keep the boys 
of a great public school in order by superior physical 
energy. This was not the way, he said, to attain 
what should be the object of every head master — to 
impress every one about him, tutors as well as boys, 
with a profound respect for his authority. " Davies," 
he said, "who was head master in my time, was 
the very incarnation of authority. We boys never 
dreamed of his condescending to any physical effort 
other than flogging us. I never shall forget my 
surprise when my father took me to place me at 
Eton, and I saw the way in which Davies treated 
a man to whom I had seen every one else so 
deferential. 

" ' Mr. Frere, I believe ? Well, sir ; is this your 
son ?' 

"'Yes.' 

" ' Well, what can he do ? where has he been ?' 

"'At Mr. Cormick's, at Putney.' 

" ' Humph ! not a bad school ; we have had some 
lads well prepared from him.' And he gave me a 
passage to read, and away I construed for bare life. 
Everything about him had the same character, 
down to his ' Hem !' which might have been heard 

1 Two died in early childhood. 



JOHN HOOKHAM FEE RE. 13 

at the end of the long walk. He was ordered by 
his physician, when he got a little infirm, to take 
carriage exercise. So he had a coach-and-four ; 
but there was something we boys did not quite like, 
in his riding, even in a coach-and-four, like an ordi- 
nary mortal ; and this effect was not lessened by 
his always using, when the horses were restive, the 
same phrase, and in the same tone, as he was 
accustomed to address to the prepostors (of the 
lower school), ' Can't you keep them quiet, there ?' 

" When old King George III. came over to Eton, 
which he used to do very frequently, I remember 
the jealousy with which we watched Davies, to see 
that he did not play the courtier too much ; and 
very well he managed it. The King, too, used quite 
to understand and humour the kind of feeling we had. 

" Davies was preceded by, and, I fancy, caught 
much of the manner of Foster, who, as I have heard 
Etonians of his day tell, had almost the same kind of 
weight in London society that old Thurlow possessed. 

" It was a grand idea to have such a school as Eton 
close under the wing of the royal castle. I have often 
wished that some one would hunt up the early charters 
or statutes to find out whether the position was the 
result of accident or design, like so many of the 
things which appear accidental in the foundation of 
Winchester, but which the statutes show, were all 
provided for, by the foresight of the founder." 

At Eton Mr. Hookham Frere formed more than 
one life-long friendship, and there began his intimacy 
with Mr. Canning, for whom he cherished a love 
and admiration, which absence never diminished, 
and neither age nor death itself could dull. 1 



1 In a "Thucydides" formerly belonging to Mr. Frere, now 
at Roydon, the following words (i. 1 38), summing up the cha- 
racter of Themistocles, are underlined, and against them he 
has written " Dear Canning " : — <p6<ritat ph hnapsi, f*i\hn; Se 

/fya^i/rim, JtpaT«7T0f W outo; auT5«rp£cJ v i<x£6iv to. Hovra iyivBTO, 



i 4 MEMOIR OF 

They appear to have become fast friends from 
their earliest schoolboy acquaintance. Mr. Canning 
was the junior by about a year, but had already 
given promise of a brilliancy of intellect, destined, 
a few years later, to dazzle the House of Commons, 
while the oratory of Pitt and Fox, of Burke and 
Sheridan, in their best days, was still matter of 
living memory. 

In 1786, they joined with a few Etonians of their 
own standing, 1 in starting "The Microcosm," a 
periodical, the essays and jeux d' esprit in which were 
supposed to refer primarily to the miniature world of 
Eton, though they often contain evidence of views 
directed to the great outside world of politics and 
literature, where some of the young authors were 
destined in a few years to play a conspicuous part. 
"The Microcosm" was the first school periodical 
which attracted much notice beyond the walls of the 
school itself, and to this, perhaps, as much as to the 
intrinsic merit of the papers it contained, is due its 
great success, which led to numerous literary ventures 
of the same kind at other of our great public schools. 
Some of the papers in " The Microcosm" contain un- 
mistakeable promise of considerable literary ability, 
and one at least, Canning's Essay on the Epic of the 
Queen of Hearts, will probably maintain its place in 
English literature as a classical specimen of burlesque 
criticism. 

The first number of " The Microcosm " was pub- 
lished on the 6th Nov., 1786, and forty numbers 
appeared regularly every Monday, holidays ex- 
cepted, till the 30th of the following July, when it 
wound up with an account of the deathbed of " Mr. 



1 Mr. J. Smith, Mr. R. Smith (brother of Sydney Smith), 
Lord Henry Spencer, third son of the Duke of Marlborough ; 
Mr. Way, Mr. Littlehales, Mr. Capel Lofft, and Mr. Mellish, 
were the other principal contributors. 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 15 

Gregory Griffin," the supposed editor, and a copy 
of his will, in which he bequeaths to the various 
authors the papers they had severally contributed. 
Mr. Hookham Frere's contributions consisted of 
five papers, 1 the style of which contains but few 
traces of a school-boy's hand. 

"The Microcosm" Was subsequently published in 
a collected form, 2 with a dedication to Dr. Davies, 
the head master, and went through at least five 
editions. 

Like most Eton men, Mr. Hookham Frere, to 
his latest years, cherished a warm affection for 
everything connected with the Royal college, and 
was never tired of recalling the memories of his 
school-boy days. Among his companions at that 
time, he used to say that, " next to Canning, none 
was expected by his contemporaries to do more in 
the world than Sydney Smith's brother 'Bobus." 

"Of Lord Wellesley's " (then Lord Mornington) 
" future career, the boys," he said, " formed a truer 
judgment than the masters ; for, while Mornington's 
school companions had a high opinion of his 
abilities, and expected him to distinguish himself, 
the masters underrated him, and used to express 
surprise at the unsurpassed facility and correctness 
of his Latin verse." 

Much was looked for, both by boys and masters, 
from Mr. Lambton, the father of the first Earl of 
Durham. " Lambton was a most amiable, superior 
man," he said, " and would have made a great 
figure in public life, if he had not been spoilt by 
his Whig associates. He was a great favourite with 
all his schoolfellows, notwithstanding the mortal 
offence which his father, General Lambton, once 
gave us. He was a very rough old soldier, and 



1 Vide infra, p. 3. 

5 " The Microcosm," a periodical work, by Gregory Griffin. 
Windsor: Printed for C. Knight, 1787. 



16 MEMOIR OF 

affronted some of us mightily by inviting us to eat, 
with ' Come along, ye young dogs ! Come and eat 
this, will ye?'" 

Talking of one of his brother Edward's 1 earliest 
reminiscences of Eton, when eighty boys were 
flogged for a sort of barring-out, and among them 
Mr. Arthur Wellesley, afterwards the Iron Duke, he 
said, " No one who has not seen it can estimate the 
good Eton does in teaching the little boys of great 
men that they have superiors. It is quite as diffi- 
cult and as important to teach this to the great 
Bankers' and Squires' boys, as to Dukes' sons, and 
I know no place where this was done so effectually 
as at Eton. Neither rank nor money had any con- 
sideration there compared with that which was paid 
to age, ability, and standing in the school." 

With these recollections he was, not unnaturally, 
disposed to question the wisdom of the plans which, 
even thirty years ago, were sometimes propounded, 
for making fundamental changes in the system and 
subjects of teaching in our public schools. " It was 
not," he maintained, " of so much importance what 
you learnt at school, as how you learnt it. At 
school a boy's business is not simply or mainly to 
gain knowledge, but to learn how to gain it. If he 
learns his own place in the world, and, in a practical 
fashion, his duty towards other boys, and to his 
superiors as well as to his inferiors ; if he acquires 
the apparatus for obtaining and storing knowledge, 
and some judgment as to what kind of knowledge 
is worth obtaining, his time at school has not been 
misspent, even if he carries away a very scanty store 



1 Next to him in age (born 1770), and educated with him 
at Eton : a man of rare natural gifts and acquirements, which 
he devoted to various inquiries connected with physical and 
mechanical science, especially to all branches connected with 
the manufacture of iron. He died in 1844, before his elder 
brother, by whom as by all his family he was greatly be- 
loved. 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 17 

of actual facts in history, or literature, or physical 
science. If, in his school-boy days, you cram his 
head with such facts, beyond what are merely ele- 
mentary, you are very apt to addle his brains, and 
to make a little prig or pedant of him, incapable, 
from self-conceit, of much progress afterwards. Nor 
can any boy carry from school any great number of 
facts which will really be useful to him, when he 
comes in after life to make those branches of know- 
ledge his special study, because they are all, but 
especially the physical sciences, progressive, and the 
best ascertained facts, as well as theories, of to-day, 
may be obsolete and discredited ten years hence. 
You find many learned men who have been great 
students and experimentalists, and even discoverers, 
in very early youth ; but the number of facts worth 
remembering, which they accumulated in boyhood, 
always bears a very small proportion to what they 
have learned after leaving school, and in earl)- 
manhood." 

For these and similar reasons, he held that no 
physical science, nor even history or literature, 
taught as separate branches of knowledge, could 
ever be efficient substitutes for classics and mathe- 
matics, at our public schools and universities, by 
way of mental training, to fit a boy to educate him- 
self in after life : classics as forming style, and 
giving a man power to use his own language cor- 
rectly in writing and speaking, and even in thinking ; 
and mathematics as the best training for reasoning, 
and as a necessary foundation for the accurate study 
of physics and natural philosophy. 

He once gave me the following illustration of his 
position that a man might be a great man, in even- 
sense of the word, without even a rudimentary 
knowledge of the facts of natural science. " I re- 
member one day going to consult Canning on a 
matter of great importance to me, when he was 
staying down near Enfield. We walked into the 

C 



18 MEMOIR OF 

woods to have a quiet talk, and as we passed some 
ponds I was surprised to find it was a new light to 
him that tadpoles turned into frogs." 

My uncle added — " Now, don't you go and tell 
that story of Canning to the next fool you meet. 
Canning could rule, and did rule, a great and civil- 
ized nation ; but in these days people are apt to 
fancy that any one who does not know the natural 
history of frogs must be an imbecile in the treatment 
of men." 

From Eton, Mr. Hookham Frere went to Caius 
College, Cambridge, where he graduated B. A. in 
1792, and M. A. in 1795. His B. A. degree was 
" allowed," as an aegrotat prevented his going in for 
honours. But his college career was not undis- 
tinguished. He was made Fellow of Caius, and 
gained several prizes for classical compositions in 
prose and verse. One of the former still possesses 
an interest, as showing the views of an ardent young 
Pittite on such subjects as colonization, free trade, 
and convict instruction in 1792, and as illustrating the 
hold which the writings of Adam Smith had already 
attained on the minds of the young men of his own 
day. It was an essay which gained the Members' 
prize in that year on the question — " Whether it be 
allowable to hope for the improvement of morals, 
and for the cultivation of virtue in the rising state 
of Botany Bay?" 1 

After a description of the colonies of Greece and 
Rome, and of the principles of their management 
as contrasted with our own American colonies and 
India, in which our main object had been commer- 
cial advantage, the writer refers to the then recent 
loss of our American colonies, caused, as he argues, 
by over eagerness to assert sovereign rights, and 
neglect of the sound commercial considerations 
which would have dictated a more liberal policy. 

1 Vide infra, vol. i. p. 41. 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 19 

Referring to Botany Bay, he insists that no commer- 
cial benefit could be expected from the settlement, 
unless the trade to the East Indies were relieved 
from the Company's monopoly. He proceeds to 
warn our government against embarrassing the 
future growth of the colony, by maintaining too 
long that strictness of regimen which was needed 
at first, alluding more particularly to martial law. 
From the example of our American colonies, from 
the non-existence in Botany Bay of many tempta- 
tions met with in older communities, and from the 
natural tendency of simple habits of life to aid 
any development of virtuous instincts, he draws a 
hopeful augury for the wellbeing of the infant 
community. 

He then notices, at some length, and with great 
surprise, the absence of all mention of religion, both 
in the published accounts of occurrences in the 
colony and in the Governor's despatches. He 
argues that mere fear of death can do little to deter 
from crime those who have already shown their 
contempt for it by their acts, and that we ought to 
think better of human nature than to despair of 
reclaiming them. At all events, future generations, 
he insists, might be rescued from contamination, 
and he adduces our American colonies to prove 
that, with abundance of fertile land free for their 
occupation, the children at least might be trained to 
simple habits and honest industry in field labour. 

The essay contains frequent references to Adam 
Smith, whose great work, published in 1776, was 
then becoming popular, and after an elaborate 
eulogy on the author of the "Wealth of Nations :" — 
as " the man who laid the foundations of peace and 
concord throughout Europe, opened and guarded 
the road to Free Trade, enunciated precepts for 
instructing the people and for colonization, supplied, 
in short, whatever was necessary beyond the schools 
of philosophers for the welfare and happiness of 



2 o MEMOIR OF 

mankind, and brought us to all appearance within 
a near approach to that wealth of the ancients, from 
which we are certainly now 1 far distant, being ex- 
cluded not by nature's wrong, but by our own 
ignorance," concludes with " only let us, according 
to his advice, not strive by abrupt and headlong 
courses, but accomplish his ends by following the 
known and gentle paths which he has pointed out." 

On leaving the university, Mr. Hookham Frere 
entered public life in the Foreign Office under 
Lord Grenville. He was returned to Parliament in 
November, 1796, as member for the close borough 
of West Looe in Cornwall, for which he continued 
to sit till the dissolution in 1802. 2 

He was from his boyhood a warm admirer of 
Pitt, who, ten years his senior, had for nearly that 
period been Prime Minister when Mr. Frere first 
began to take an active share in politics. Maturer 
judgment and longer experience in public life, did 
something more than confirm the young political 
subaltern's allegiance to a great party leader. His 
attachment to Pitt was, indeed, a much warmer 
personal feeling than that which the haughty cha- 
racter of his chief inspired in most of his political 
adherents, but it was discriminating and enduring ; 
and when the generation of public men, to which 
they both belonged, had passed away from active 
political life, and the events which had so passion- 
ately convulsed Europe in his youth had become 



1 At the time when the essay was written very great and 
general pecuniary distress prevailed in this country. 

2 I have heard it related, as characteristic of the close 
borough system, that Mr. Frere never was at West Looe, the 
borough for which he sat in Parliament, till he accidentally 
stopped there on one of his journeys to Falmouth to embark 
for Spain. Nor did he then discover the fact till the bell- 
ringers, who had learnt that their borough member was at 
dinner in the Inn set the bells ringing, and called to ask for 
" something to drink his health." 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 21 

matters of history half-a-century old, Mr. Frere, 
who never lost any of his keen interest in the 
political events of the day, would still maintain 
that Pitt understood the spirit and force of the 
French Revolution, as well as the genius and wants 
of modern English political life, more clearly than 
any either of his contemporaries or immediate 
successors in his own party, and that he was a 
greater and more far-seeing statesman than any of 
his rivals or opponents. 

It cannot be said that this feeling was in any 
respect the worship of good fortune, for the tide of 
unvarying prosperity which marked the earlier 
years of Pitt's administration, had turned before 
Mr. Frere took office under him. 

In 1792 Pitt had been most reluctantly forced 
into hostilities with France, and however flattering 
to our national pride may have been the naval 
successes which from time to time added to our 
colonial empire, or averted invasion from India or 
from the British Islands themselves, the brilliancy 
of these victories did but deepen the gloom which, 
year after year, seemed settling down on our pros- 
pects in our own country and on the continent, as 
one ancient monarchy after another succumbed to 
the vigour of the young Republican armies, as our 
financial and domestic difficulties, especially in 
Ireland, increased, till in 1800, after eight years of 
war, the peace of Luneville proclaimed the utter 
prostration of every one of Napoleon's continental 
opponents. Nelson's daring at Copenhagen, and 
the death of the Emperor Paul, averted, for the 
moment, that combination of the northern powers 
with France against us, which so seriously threat- 
ened our command of the sea ; but it was evident 
that the danger was but averted for a time, and at 
no period in our modern history was there so much 
reason for the grave anxiety of all true patriots — so 
much necessity for that constancy and courage for 



22 MEMOIR OF 

which even his worst enemies allowed that Pitt was 
pre-eminently distinguished. 

We who now know how all this ended, and to 
what it has since led, can with difficulty put our- 
selves in the position of those who saw the con- 
cluding eight years of the last century, and could 
estimate better than the crowd of their contem- 
poraries the strength of the revolutionary spirit at 
work, and the weakness, corruption, and divisions 
of much that was naturally opposed to it. But as 
we read the chequered chronicle of national success 
and failure, we can enter into the feelings of those 
young and ardent followers of Pitt who were, in 
some sense, behind the scenes of official life, and 
saw public affairs in something of the same light as 
he did ; and we can understand the enthusiasm 
with which they would devote themselves to a 
leader who, in the darkest hours of our national 
trials, was still recognized by the instincts of the 
least reflecting of his supporters as the." Pilot who 
weathered the storm." 

Mr. Frere paid a short visit to France just before 
the final outbreak of the French Revolution, and 
brought back with him a strong conviction of the 
gravity of the crisis which was evidently impending. 
His intercourse with Mr. Canning, which had been 
necessarily somewhat interrupted during their col- 
lege career, when Mr. Canning went to Oxford and 
his friend to Cambridge, was renewed very much on 
the intimate footing of their school-boy days at 
Eton, after Mr. Canning took his B. A. degree in 
1793. The following is an extract from a note of 
some recollections of those days, as described by 
Mr. Frere nearly half-a-century afterwards (1844-5). 
The conversation had turned on a Life of Canning, 
in which his early adhesion to the Tory party was 
discussed as if it required explanation. Mr. Frere 
remarked, " Nothing was more natural or less need- 
ing explanation than Canning's early adhesion to 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 23 

Pitt. As schoolboys, while I was by association a 
Tory, and by inclination a Pittite, Canning, by 
family connexion and association was a Whig, or 
rather a Foxite. This was, I believe, almost the 
only point on which our boyish opinions in those 
days very materially differed ; but it did not pre- 
vent our being great friends, and I am sure that a 
young man of Canning's views and feelings entering 
Parliament at such a time, could not long have 
been kept in opposition to Pitt. Canning's uncle 
and guardian was a Whig, and at his house Can- 
ning met most of the leaders of the Whigs, and 
they were not slow in recognizing his ability, and 
tried to attach him to their party. It showed 
Canning's sagacity, as well as his high spirit and 
confidence in himself, that he determined to take 
his own line, and judge for himself. When I went 
to see him at Oxford he showed me a letter he had 

received from Mrs. C , whose husband was a 

great Whig leader. It enclosed a note from the 
Duke of Portland, offering to bring Canning into 
Parliament. The offer was a very tempting one to 
so young a man. But Canning refused it, and he 
told me his reason. ' I think,' he said, ' there must 
be a split. The Duke will go over to Pitt, and I 
will go over in no man's train. If I join Pitt, I will 
go by myself.' 

" I afterwards, through Lord , got Canning 

introduced to Pitt. He came into Parliament for 
one of what were called ' Bob Smith's boroughs,' 
and he very soon became a great favourite of Pitt's. 
Dundas used often to have Pitt to sup with him 
after the House rose, and one night he took Can- 
ning with him. There was no one else, and Can- 
ning came to me next morning before I was out of 
bed, told me where he had been supping the night 
before, and added, ' I am quite sure I have them 
both ;' and I did not wonder at it, for with his 
humour and fancy it was impossible to resist him. 



24 MEMOIR OF 

He had much more in common with Pitt than any 
one else about him, and his love for Pitt was quite 
filial, and Pitt's feeling for him was more that of a 
father than of a mere political leader. I am sure 
that from the first Pitt marked Canning out as his 
political heir, and had, in addition, the warmest 
personal regard for him. 

" Some years after, when Canning was going to 
be married, Pitt felt as keenly about the affair as if 
he had nothing else to think of and Canning had 
been his only child. It was a good match for 
Canning in a worldly point of view, for his own 
fortune was not adequate to the political position 
Pitt would have liked him to hold. Pitt not only 
took a personal interest in the match himself, but 
he made old Dundas think almost as much about 
it, as if it had been some important party combina- 
tion." 

In reply to some remark about Pitt's supposed 
frigidity of disposition, Mr. Frere said, with some 
warmth, " No one who really knew Pitt intimately 
would have called him cold. A man who is Prime 
Minister at twenty-six, cannot carry his heart on 
his sleeve and be ' Hail, fellow ! well met,' with 
every Jack, Tom, and Harry. Pitt's manner by 
nature, as well as by habit and necessity, was in 
public always dignified, reserved, and imperious ; 
but he had very warm feelings, and had it not been 
for the obligations of the official position, which lay 
on him almost throughout his whole life, I believe 
he might have had nearly as many personal friends 
as Fox." 

Speaking (in 1844) of the early years of the 
French Revolution, Mr. Frere said : " I am certain 
that, up to the very last, it was Pitt's determination 
to have kept clear from the European wars con- 
sequent on the French Revolution. Nothing was 
more unjust than the charge constantly brought 
against him, that he did not do all that a patriotic 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 25 

minister could do to preserve peace. His personal 
interests and predilections were all in favour of 
peace, and nothing but the outrageous conduct of 
the French compelled him to take part in the war, 
which no English minister could have long avoided, 
unless by joining the French in their onslaught 
upon all the old governments in Europe. He had 
got the funds up from about 64 to something like 
93, and had established his Sinking Fund, which, if 
he had been succeeded by men like himself, would 
have done all he expected of it ; but the inferior 
men who followed him had not the wisdom to resist 
the temptation of cribbing from it, to supply the 
necessities of the day. 

" People talk of the Sinking Fund as if Pitt had 
ever imagined that money had some mysterious 
reproductive power. He, of course, never imagined 
anything of the kind. But he knew human nature, 
and he thought, I believe rightly, that it was a 
device by which people could be made more patient 
of taxation to pay off debts than in any other 
form ; and most people, who have an income in 
excess of their current expenditure, devise some 
kind of sinking fund for themselves." 

In reply to a question whether subsequent events 
had not shown that Pitt underestimated the strength 
of the revolutionary spirit with which he had to deal 
in opposing the French Republic, he added : " I 
think not in the least. It seems to me that all we 
have since learnt of the internal history of France 
during the first ten years of the Revolution, goes to 
prove that Pitt was much more right in his calcula- 
tions of what we had opposed to us, than even his 
followers and admirers at the time supposed. I do 
not say that anything could have checked the pro- 
gress of the Revolution. We have not to this day 
seen the end of it ; but the French nation and re- 
sources were more thoroughly exhausted than we 
were, which is saying a good deal, and the war 



26 MEMOIR OF 

would have ended when Pitt expected, and the 
French have been compelled to let other people 
alone, for some years at all events, had it not been 
for the appearance of Buonaparte. He was a 
phenomenon on which no man could have cal- 
culated, and it was mainly owing to him that the 
final exhaustion of France was deferred for fifteen 
years. 

" A war, like the Revolutionary war, is necessarily 
one of exhaustion. You cannot end it by a pitched 
battle, nor even by occupying a capital or over- 
running a whole country 

" The Republicans had found in history that all 
great military commanders under a Republic were 
apt to end by making themselves supreme. They 
thought to prevent this by chopping off the head of 
every successful general ; and this system answered 
very well till they got hold of Buonaparte. I re- 
member when first I read his dispatches from the 
army of Italy, and saw how completely he under- 
stood the Directory and how to manage them, I 
said to myself, ' Well, here at last is a fellow whose 
head they will not be able to chop off.' 

" People who find fault with Pitt's conduct of the 
war do not consider the difficulties arising from the 
jealousies of our allies. It is easy to say he might 
have found a Marlborough and done as Marl- 
borough did. But Marlborough was always doing 
the work of his allies, and they knew it. It was 
not till after years of humiliation under Buonaparte's 
heel, that the continental nations agreed to sink 
their jealousies under Wellington ; and even he 
would have had hard work of it if Buonaparte had 
had a little more time, or if France had been a little 
less tired of him." 

In reply to a question whether he had read 
Alison's account of the French Revolution in the 
" History of Europe," he said, " No ! I have no wish 
to read any more summary histories of the French 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 27 

Revolution. It cost me ten most miserable years 
of my life ; for, from 1794 to 1804, I had but little 
hope for England. When it first broke out, people 
in England were beside themselves, and very few- 
men had any notion of what it would lead to. I 
remember old Lady Fenn, a pattern of a good old- 
fashioned Tory and High Churchwoman, and a 
wonderfully shrewd sensible woman too, writing to 
my father after the destruction of the Bastille. 
She had been reading Cowper's lines, and was 
charmed with what had been done. I can fancy 
his answer was a trimmer ; for he saw, more clearly 
than most men, what mob-rule meant, and that, 
when once they began to have everything their 
own way, the mob would not stop, after they had 
destroyed Bastilles. It is very difficult for any one 
in this generation to imagine what a struggle it was 
for existence as the war went on. The first real 
daylight I saw was when the Spaniards rose and I 
found that there were people, besides ourselves, in 
Europe, who were determined not to be swallowed 
up and converted into French subjects." 

Speaking of Burke he said, " I did not know him 
much personally, and never met him in society ; for 
when I began to busy myself about public affairs, 
he was old, and depressed, and lived very retired at 
Beaconsfield ; but I was sitting in the gallery of the 
House of Commons during his famous dagger 
speech. I agreed with most of his political views. 
I well remember getting his first letter on the 
French Revolution. It was one of the few books 
which I ever sat up all night to read. 

" At the time we were first involved in the Re- 
volutionary war, all Pitt's thoughts and hopes were 
directed to fiscal and financial and other domestic 
reforms ; and it is a knowledge of how much his 
mind was, from choice, directed to such reforms, 
that satisfies me of the sincerity of his wish to have 
avoided war at the outset, if he could have done so 



28 MEMOIR OF 

with honour. He never lost sight of his plans of 
financial improvement during the whole of the life- 
and-death struggle which followed ; and it was, I 
think, his feeling that the opportunity for carrying 
out his plans was never likely to recur during his 
own lifetime, which made him towards its close so 
anxious to put Canning in a position to succeed 
him as his political heir. Canning fully entered 
into all Pitt's views on such matters, and would have 
carried them out, but he never had an opportunity 
till it was too late ; before he became Prime Mini- 
ster he had little to say to finance ; and after the 
war was over, there was for many years great ex- 
haustion, and a kind of lassitude which made men 
indisposed to entertain projects of reform in finance 
or in anything else. 

" I remember, about that time, asking Canning 
what had become of many plans of the kind, which 
we used to talk of in our younger days ; and he 
said, almost bitterly, after naming some of the men 
with whom he was obliged to act, 'What can I 
churn out of such skimmed milk as that ?' 

" I feel inclined to be angry sometimes when I 
hear what I know were some of Pitt's early schemes, 
which he, and Canning after him, hoped to carry 
out whenever they had an opportunity, spoken of 
by the Whigs as if they were the rightful inherit- 
ance of the Whig party, and as if every one else 
who took them up was poaching on Whig pre- 
serves." 

In answer to a remark that assessed taxes were 
but a bad expedient for raising money, even in a 
time of war, and that Pitt had very largely resorted 
to them, he said : " During the war, Pitt was often 
obliged to raise money by almost any means he 
could, without much consideration, except for the 
productiveness of the tax at the moment. The 
assessed taxes were, I think, necessary evils during 
the war, but nothing is worse as an ordinary source 



JOHN HOOKHAM ERE RE. 29 

of revenue. No man was more alive to this than Pitt ; 
andhadhelivedtoseepermanentpeace,we should not 
have had any assessed taxes now (1844). They act 
almost as mischievouslyand unfairly as a general poll 
tax. It was the old principle of all English taxation 
that it should fall mainly on property. The debt in- 
curred during a war is the price of our deliverance 
from foreign domination. It justly falls on all 
property in the nation. When a ship is saved, you 
take the salvage from the value of the cargo, not 
from the seamen's wages. Our common people 
gave their blood to maintain the contest, and that 
is all we ought to expect from them. Nothing is 
so vexatious as an assessed tax — take what you 
please out of my income, but let me do as I please 
with the rest. I believe even now (1844) you must 
watch that the old paralytic butler, whom you keep 
as a pensioner, never cleans the plate, lest he should 
be charged as a house servant. The farm-boy, who 
is sent off on a cart-horse to fetch Doctor Slop 
when the good woman is ill, is liable to sur-charge 
as a domestic servant, and you are obliged to be 
careful when he pulls turnips and brings them to 
the kitchen lest the cook-maid should set him to 
peel them. The assessed taxes keep people living 
abroad, and encourage every kind of evasion. It 
would be a good thing if Peel would add sixpence 
in the pound to the tax on real property, and then 
do away with assessed taxes altogether. 

" I see very little in the real Reforms of late 
years which Pitt would not have anticipated, had 
time and opportunity permitted ; and he is often 
most unjustly judged, because he couldn't tell 
people why he was obliged to postpone his own 
convictions to the exigencies of the day, or to the 
opposition of a master like George III., or of some 
colleague who, in other respects, was indispensable." 

Speaking of the conduct of Count Mole, at the 
opening of the French Session in 1845, ne sa ^ : " I 



3 o MEMOIR OF 

suspect the secret is a wish on the part of Louis 
Philippe to show M. Guizot that he can do without 
him, and that a coalition between Thiers and Mole 
is not impossible. Guizot seems to me a man of 
genius, and there is nothing a king of the character 
and in the position of Louis Philippe finds so irk- 
some as to have for minister a man of genius. 
Men like Addington are the kind of ministers who 
are really acceptable to a sovereign who thinks, and 
wishes to act, for himself." 

In answer to a question whether George III. had 
not a great personal regard for Pitt, he said — "Lat- 
terly he had, but certainly not at first. It was a 
choice between him and Fox, and the King inclined 
to Pitt as the less obnoxious of the two. Pitt's 
name was best known, in his early days, as an 
advocate for Parliamentary reform. I remember, 
when I was a boy, hearing two H'igh Tories of the 
old school, at my father's house, talking about Pitt 
when he first became Prime Minister ; they said : 
' He is a thorn in our side; but one must sometimes 
stick to a bramble to save one from a fall into 
something worse.' The old Tories at first had very 
little confidence in him. I recollect they were all 
in great delight when the church at Wimbledon, 
where Pitt lived, was to be repaired, because he 
sent a hundred pounds as his subscription, with a 
request ' that it might be laid out on the steeple, in 
order that the church might not look like a meet- 
ing house.' The old Tories began then to think 
that there was really some hope of him after that!" 

In reply to a question whether Pitt's conduct 
with regard to the slavery question did not justify 
the assertion that he had, in his latter years, and in 
the plenitude of power, neglected to give practical 
effect to some of the high principles which he advo- 
cated so eloquently in earlier life, Mr. Frere said : 
" No, I have no doubt his sagacity saw obstacles 
of which we knew nothing. I remember Canning 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 31 

being most eager to get an order in council issued 
to abolish slavery in the conquered colonies. It 
could then have been done by a simple order, and 
none of us could see why the order was not issued. 
Canning was as vexed as he could be with Pitt. 
Dundas was against it, and Pitt no doubt saw 
difficulties on the part of the King. He could 
not tell us what the obstacles were ; and this often 
happens to a minister when he has one great work, 
like a war, on hand. He is often forced to post- 
pone some of his favourite projects, and not be able 
to say why, even to friends like Wilberforce and 
Canning." 

He said, on another occasion, that he felt sure at 
the time there was some other reason for Pitt's 
postponement of action with regard to the question 
of slavery, beyond that which forced him to post- 
pone so many of his favourite measures of reform, 
and which Windham described as " the impossibility 
of repairing one's house in the hurricane season. 
In these days of peace (1845), people forget what 
an all-absorbing occupation a great national struggle 
for existence must be. No minister in his senses 
would have risked divisions of his party during the 
Revolutionary war, by discussing any controverted 
questions which admitted of being postponed." 

In 1797 Mr. Frere joined with Mr. Canning, and 
some other of the younger members of their party, 
in the publication of the "Anti-Jacobin." It was 
intended to counteract, as far as possible in a weekly 
paper, the active and persistent efforts of the Re- 
publican party to disseminate their principles 
through the medium of the periodical press. Gif- 
ford was chosen editor, and a prospectus published 
which sets forth at some length, and with becom- 
ing gravity, the objects of supporting the existing 
order of things against the attacks of Jacobins and 
other secret or declared enemies of the nation and 
constitution. The first number of the "Anti- 



32 MEMOIR OF 

Jacobin, or Weekly Examiner," appeared on the 
20th Nov. 1797, with a notice that the publication 
would be continued every Monday during the sit- 
ting of Parliament." At the outset the intention 
of the projectors appears to have been, to meet the 
propagandists of the new political and social philo- 
sophy with heavy batteries of fact and argument. 
Authentic news was to be supplied, the misrepre- 
sentations of the opposition press were to be refuted 
under a regularly classified gradation of " Mistakes," 
" Misstatements," and "Lies;" and a considerable 
space was to be devoted to formal essays on his- 
torical and constitutional questions. The first 
number contained a preliminary instalment of an 
article " On the Origin and Progress of the French 
Revolution, and its Effects on France and other 
Countries," with a promise of continuation, which, 
if it had been fulfilled in the same style, and in the 
same detail as the introductory chapter, would have 
required years for its completion. 

But the conductors of the " Anti-Jacobin " seem 
to have become early aware, that it was not by 
ponderous weapons such as these elaborate essays 
that the battle was to be fought. 

Five years earlier there might have been some 
use in arguing against those who maintained that 
the progress of the French Revolution meant no 
harm to property, morals or religion, as by law 
established, in any neighbouring nation. There 
were then many who believed that the war was 
really caused by the pride, selfish ambition, or 
obstinacy of the King or Mr. Pitt, or by the class 
of landowners, the aristocracy, or by the fund- 
holders ; that it might end, as far as England was 
concerned, whenever the English chose to abstain 
from it ; and that, if let alone, the French would 
arrange their domestic affairs their own way, with- 
out troubling their neighbours. But in 1797 the 
conduct of the French nation, and the actions as 



JOHX HOOKHAM FRERE. 33 

well as the language of their rulers, had already 
supplied a sufficient answer to such assertions. 
With the facts of the past five campaigns in Ger- 
many and Italy before their eyes, the great bulk of 
the English nation had become thoroughly con- 
vinced that the war had really been forced on us 
by the aggressive character of the Revolution ; 
that the only alternative was to follow the French 
example, and allow ourselves to be drawn into the 
Revolutionary vortex ; and that " peace at any 
price," was incompatible not only with the preser- 
vation of our existing laws regarding property, and 
with the toleration of existing beliefs in matters of 
religion, but with our separate existence as an in- 
dependent people. On all these points the mind of 
the nation was by that time pretty well made up, 
and an overwhelming and increasing majority in 
and out of Parliament supported the ministry in 
the prosecution of the war. Elaborate argument, 
therefore, on such questions, was superfluous and 
out of date. But, at the same time, there were 
dangerous and wide-spread discontents which were 
often more embarrassing than declared opposition. 
New opinions on every subject connected with law, 
religion, and property, were making their way into 
popular literature, and were spreading among 
people who had thought little about such questions 
before ; and the pressure of taxation, felt through- 
out the country with yearly increasing severity, did 
not dispose any class to be content with things 
as they were. Against this kind of feeling, which 
was rapidly spreading while the actual ministerial 
majority in Parliament was increasing, the heavy 
artillery of grave essays on the origin and progress 
of the Revolution, could do little. 

The plan of the " Anti-Jacobin," however, com- 
prised an armoury of lighter weapons, and its pro- 
jectors soon found that an epigram was, for such a 

D 



34 MEMOIR OF 

purpose as theirs, often more effectual than an 
argument. The first number of the new periodical 
contained an "Introduction to the Poetry of the 
' Anti-Jacobin,' " written by Canning, which indi- 
cates the system on which they proposed to avail 
themselves of this mode of counteracting the effects 
of the French Revolution, at least as far as the 
lighter literature of the country was concerned. 
The humour of the description of the new school of 
poetry and poetical morality will atone for a long 
quotation. 

" In our anxiety to provide for the amusement as 
well as information of our readers, we have not 
omitted to make all the inquiries in our power for 
ascertaining the means of procuring poetical assist- 
ance. And it would give us no small satisfaction 
to be able to report that we had succeeded in 
this point, precisely in the manner which would 
best have suited our own taste and feelings, as 
well as those which we wish to cultivate in our 
readers. 

" But whether it be that good morals, and what 
we should call good politics, are inconsistent with 
the spirit of true poetry — whether ' tlie Muses still 
with freedom found' have an aversion to regiriar 
governments, and require a frame and system of 
protection less complicated than King, Lords, and 
Commons : — 

' Whether primordial uonse?ise springs to life 
In the wild war of Democratic strife ' 

and there only — or for whatever other reason it may 
be, whether physical, or moral, or philosophical 
(which last is understood to mean something more 
than the other two, though exactly what, it is diffi- 
cult to say); we have not been able to find one 
good and true poet, of sound principles and sober 
practice, upon whom we could rely for furnishing us 
with a handsome quantity of sufficient and approved 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 35 

verse — such verse as our readers might be expected 
to get by heart and to sing, as Monge describes the 
little children of Sparta and Athens singing the 
songs of freedom ; in expectation of the coming of 
tJie great nation. 

" In this difficulty, we have had no choice but 
either to provide no poetry at all, a shabby ex- 
pedient, or to go to the only market where it is to 
be had good and ready made, that of the Jacobins 
— an expedient full of danger, and not to be used 
but with the utmost caution and delicacy. 

"To this latter expedient, however, after mature 
deliberation, we have determined to have recourse ; 
qualifying it at the same time with such precautions, 
as may conduce at once to the safety of our readers' 
principles, and to the improvement of our own 
poetry. 

" For this double purpose, we shall select, from 
time to time, from among those effusions of the 
Jacobin muse which happen to fall in our way, such 
pieces as may serve to illustrate some one of the 
principles on which the poetical, as well as the 
political doctrine of the New School is established 
— prefacing each of them, for our readers' sake, with 
a short disquisition on the particular tenet intended 
to be enforced or insinuated in the production before 
them — and accompanying it with an humble effort 
of our own, in imitation of the poem itself, and in 
further illustration of its principle. 

" By these means, though we cannot hope to 
catch 'the wood-notes wild' of the bards of freedom, 
we may yet acquire, by dint of repeating after them, 
a more complete knowledge of the secret in which 
their greatness lies, than we could by mere prosaic 
admiration — and if we cannot become poets our- 
selves, we at least shall have collected the elements 
of a Jacobin art of poetry for the use of those whose 
genius may be more capable of turning them to 
advantage. 



36 MEMOIR OF 

" It may not be unamusing to trace the springs 
and principles of this species of poetry, which are 
to be found, some in the exaggeration, and others 
in the direct inversion of the sentiments and passions 
which have in all ages animated the breast of the 
favourite of the muses, and distinguished him from 
the ' vulgar throng.' 

" The poet in all ages has despised riches and 
grandeur. 

" The Jacobin poet improves this sentiment into 
a hatred of the rich and the great. 

" The poet of other times has been an enthusiast 
in the love of his native soil. 

" The Jacobin poet rejects all restriction on his 
feelings. His love is enlarged and expanded so as 
to comprehend all human kind. The love of all 
human kind is without doubt a noble passion ; it 
can hardly be necessary to mention, that its opera- 
tion extends to Freemen, and them only, all over 
the world. 

" The old poet was a warrior, at least in imagina- 
tion ; and sung the actions of the heroes of his 
country in strains which ' made ambition virtue,' 
and which overwhelmed the horrors of war in its 
glory. 

" The Jacobin poet would have no objection to 
sing battles too — but he would take a distinction. 
The prowess of Buonaparte indeed he might chaunt 
in his loftiest strain of exultation. There we should 
find nothing but trophies, and triumphs, and 
branches of laurel and olive ; phalanxes of Republi- 
cans shouting victory, satellites of despotism biting 
the ground, and geniuses of Liberty planting 
standards on mountain-tops. 

" But let his own country triumph, or her allies 
obtain an advantage ; straightway the ' beauteous 
face of war ' is changed ; the ' pride, pomp, and cir- 
cumstance' of victory are kept carefully out of 



JOHN HOOK HAM FEE RE. 37 

sight — and we are presented with nothing but con- 
tusions and amputations, plundered peasants, and 
deserted looms. Our poet points the thunder of 
his blank verse at the head of the recruiting Serjeant, 
or roars in dithyrambics against the lieutenants of 
pressgangs. 

" But it would be endless to chase the coy muse 
of Jacobinism through all her characters. Mille 
habet ornatus. The Mille dccentcr Jiabct is perhaps 
more questionable. For in whatever disguise she 
appears, whether of mirth or melancholy, of piety or 
of tenderness, under all disguises, like Sir John 
Brute in woman's clothes, she is betrayed by her 
drunken swagger and ruffian tone. 

" In the poem which we have selected for the 
edification of our readers, and our own imitation, 
this day, the principles which are meant to be in- 
culcated speak so plainly for themselves, that they 
need no previous introduction." 

Southey's "Inscription for the apartment in Chep- 
stow Castle, where Henry Marten, the regicide, was 
imprisoned thirty years," is then quoted at length, 
and followed by the " Imitation," as it is called, an 
inscription for Mrs. Brownrigg's cell in Newgate, 
which was the joint production of Canning and 
Frere. 

The parody immediately achieved immense popu- 
larity. " It found its way from clubs, drawing-rooms, 
and literary coteries into the streets." The success 
of the poetical department of the new periodical was 
at once secured, and a considerable service was done 
to the Government of the day. Their opponents 
were already charging them with straining the law 
in their prosecutions for political offences. Honest 
citizens, who believed in and voted steadily for Pitt, 
were not likely to be carried away by the demo- 
cratic enthusiasm of the youthful poet, who classed 
the execution of Charles the First with 



38 MEMOIR OF 

" Goodliest plans of happiness on earth, 
And Peace and Liberty — " 

but state prosecutions are never popular, and in 
the burlesque commiseration for the fate of the 
prenticide Mrs. Brownrigg, the constitutional de- 
fender of law and order found a ready means of 
confounding the arguments of all over-scrupulous 
sticklers for the rights of the subject. 

The shafts of ridicule told with still greater effect 
on the more impressible classes, and helped to keep 
in the ministerial fold many a young literary ad- 
venturer or sober dissenter, whose poetical or reli- 
gious feelings might have been touched by such 
appeals as Southey's visions of a millennial reign of 
liberty, or by his description of the beauties of 
nature, from enjoying which the regicide was de- 
barred. 

The promise of the first number of the "Anti- 
Jacobin " was not belied by its successors. It may 
reasonably be doubted whether the " leader " with 
which the second number opens could have been 
very comforting to the house-keeper of those days, 
or very successful in convincing the taxpayer that 
the budget, which trebled the assessed taxes, even 
" for a limited time," was matter for congratulation ; 
however much it might, as the writer argued, " de- 
monstrate the vigour and resources of the country 
in a manner the most likely to shorten the war, and 
bring our proud enemies to reason." — There was, 
however, no arguing against conclusions deduced 
from the Sapphic colloquy between the Friend of 
Humanity and the needy Knife Grinder, and the 
best reasoned political essay could produce little 
effect compared with the imaginary reports of the 
" meetings of the Friends of Freedom," in which 
the peculiarities of Fox, and the other great opposi- 
tion orators, are parodied with such a humorous 
felicity as would materially impair the effects of 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 39 

their rhetoric in the House of Commons, as long as 
the clubs were amused by quotations from the 
burlesque imitations. 

Most of the poetical contributions and political 
squibs took the form either of translation from the 
French or of imitations of the democratic oratory 
or literature of the day. Some of them bid fair, as 
predicted by Sir George Cornewall Lewis, 1 " to be 
much longer lived than the originals." Many were 
written in concert by Canning, Ellis, and Frere, so 
that it was difficult for the authors themselves, in 
later years, to assign to each his exact original 
share in the composition. This was especially apt 
to be the case when the article happened to have 
been written in the editor's room at Wright the 
publisher's. The room was the common property 
of the three who aided Gifford in his labours as 
editor, and from the anecdotes Mr. Frere used to 
tell of concurrent authorship, they seem to have 
suggested, here a line, there a phrase, to one another, 
very much as they might have done when school- 
boys at Eton. 

Among the contributors whose names possess 
independent claims to historical record were Mr. 
Jenkinson afterwards Earl of Liverpool, Lord Clare, 
Lord Mornington afterwards Lord Wellesley, Lord 
Carlisle, Chief Baron Macdonald, and Lord Mor- 
peth. 

Gifford, besides filling the laborious post of work- 
ing editor, wrote the articles headed " Mistakes, 
Misstatements and Lies," which were intended to 
correct the misrepresentations of fact by the revo- 
lutionary writers. 

Pitt himself is said to have written one of the 
earlier papers on Finance, to have contributed a 
stanza or two to one of the poems, and to have 

1 " The Classical Museum," vol. i. 1844, p. 239. 



40 MEMOIR OF 

attended one of the earlier meetings of the 
editors. 1 

It has, however, been asserted that the publication 
was at last discontinued at his direct instance, from 
an apprehension not, under the circumstances, at all 
unreasonable, that the satirical spirit to which so 
much of the success of the " Anti-Jacobin " was due, 
might in the long run prove a less manageable 
and discriminating ally than a party leader would 
desire. 

However that may be, 2 the last number of the 
"Anti-Jacobin " was issued on the 9th of July, 1798, 
at the close of the Parliamentary session, after a 
triumphant career of eight months, in the course of 



1 These meetings were held weekly at Wright's, the pub- 
lisher's, No. 169, Piccadilly. His assistant, Upcott, was 
employed as amanuensis to copy out the articles before they 
were sent to the printer ; and the usual precautions appear 
to have been taken to secure the incognito of contributors. 
But from the character of the compositions, and the number 
and position of the contributors, it was hardly possible to 
preserve secrecy as to the authorship of the more popular 
pieces ; and many of them seem to have been assigned by 
rumour to their real authors very soon after publication. 

2 In Mr. Frere's copy of Gillman's " Life of Samuel Taylor 
Coleridge " (now in the Roydon Library), vol. i. p. 70, at the 
following sentence — " Chimerical as it appeared, the purveyors 
of amusement for the reading public were thus furnished with 
occupation and some small pecuniary gain, while it exercised 
the wit of certain Anti-Jacobin writers of the day, and raised 
them into notice. Canning had the faculty of satire to an 
extraordinary degree, etc.," the words italicised are under- 
lined by Mr. Frere, who wrote the following note on the 
subject in pencil on the margin of the book : — 

" Not so. Mr. Canning was at that time Under-Secretary 
for the Foreign Department, with the certainty of passing, as 
he did, to a higher office. He had possessed, as everybody 
knew, the most unbounded influence over the mind of Mr. 
Pitt — he felt that the office of a weekly journalist was deroga- 
tory to the position which he held in society and in the official 
world — accordingly, as soon as he found that he had suc- 
ceeded in giving a wrench to public opinion, he closed the 
publication with the poem of ' New Morality.' " 



JOHN HOOK II AM FRERE. 41 

which its success as a political engine far exceeded 
the most sanguine hopes of its projectors. 

The intrinsic merit of the satirical poetry and 
lighter literary articles is best proved by their 
having survived the living memory of most of the 
circumstances and persons to which they allude, 
and by their having been frequently reprinted in a 
collected form. 1 

Much has sometimes been said of the personal- 
ities and party spirit, of which they contain abun- 
dant evidence. But it must be recollected that 
they were originally written for purely party pur- 
poses, and they are certainly not more open to 
censure on this account than party writings gene- 
rally, and the writings of that period in particular. 
Most readers, on a fair consideration of the cir- 
cumstances under which the " Anti-Jacobin " was 
published, will probably feel inclined to agree with 
Moore, that many of the most pungent articles are 
" models of that style of political satire whose 
lightness and vivacity give it the appearance of 
proceeding rather from the wantonness of wit than 
of ill-nature, and whose very malice, from the fancy 
with which it is mixed up, like certain kinds of 
fireworks, explodes in sparkles." 

Nor can there be any doubt that the " Loves of 
the Triangles," " The Progress of Man," and " The 
Rovers " conferred on the literature of the day a 
substantial benefit, by holding up to ridicule of- 
fences against sound canons of literary taste and 
judgment which hardly admitted of any other mode 
of correction. 

In 1799, on Mr. Canning's removal to the Board 
of Trade, Mr. Frere succeeded him as Under Se- 
cretary of State in the Foreign Office. Among the 



1 The " Anti-Jacobin " had reached a fourth edition in 1799. 
Several editions of the poetry were re-published separately ; 
the last with notes by Chas. Edmonds in 1854. 



42 MEMOIR OF 

few of his letters which have been preserved are some 
which he wrote at this period from the Foreign 
Office to his brother Bartle, 1 who was attached as 
Private Secretary to Lord Minto's mission at Vienna. 
The following extracts are given, not because they 
throw any new light on the momentous affairs to 
which the Public Despatches of the Foreign Office 
at that time had reference, but as specimens of style, 
and of a humour, which was irrepressible, whatever 
might be the subject : — 

" Dear Bartle, 

" I have sent you a new box at last, the 
reason which prevented me from making use of 
them before was the same which rendered it im- 
possible for Punch to make his appearance in the 
first scene of the Puppet Show of the Creation, 
namely, that he was not yet come from the hands 
of his maker. I trust to Ned, William, 2 and my 
father, for telling you all family news. The public, 
I hope, is doing pretty well. But what is most 
material for me to observe is, that it being now 20 
m. past 1 1 on Saturday morning, it will be as much 

1 His fifth brother, Bartholomew, born 1776. He entered 
the diplomatic service as private secretary to Lord Minto on 
his mission to Vienna in 1799, the same year in which he 
took his degree as first Senior Opt., and First Chancellor's 
Medallist, having been elected Scholar of Trinity, 1797, and 
gained the Browne medals, 1798. He continued in active 
employment at Vienna, Lisbon, Madrid, and Constantinople 
as Secretary of Legation, Charge d'Affaires or Minister until 
1 82 1, when he retired on his pension. He died, reverenced 
by many beyond his immediate family, in 1851. He will still 
be remembered by a few who knew him as one of the earliest 
members of the Traveller's Club, the Royal Geographical and 
other Societies, where his varied learning, his cultivated taste, 
playful wit, and most engaging manners, made him a wel- 
come associate, and earned for him the tribute of regard to 
his memory passed by the President of the Geographical 
Society in 1852. Journal R. G. S., vol. xxii. p. lxvi. 

8 His fourth brother William, afterwards Serjeant Frere, and 
Master of Downing College, Cambridge: born 1775, died 1836. 



JOHN HOOKHAM FEE RE. 43 

as the messenger can do to get down to Yarmouth 
before the packet sails ; you say nothing about 
Wickham ; how do he and Lord M. draw to- 
gether ? 

" Yours affte y . 

"J. H. Frere." 

In another letter he forwards one which he had 
received from his brother Edward, announcing his 
engagement to be married. After various humorous 
conjectures as to the reason why his brother had 
omitted the lady's name, he adds — 

" Our peace, if we have any (mind I am speaking 
seriously and diplomatically), must be jointly with 
Austria ; preserving her influence with the powers 
of Italy and the South of Germany, by dint of 
subsidy from England if necessary (as in the case 
of Hesse during the last peace), and ready to begin 
again if France should stir ; with anything short of 
this we shall be undone. Broughton is standing 
by me and desires me to say that he has sent your 
flies. 

" We have fine weather at last, and I hope shall 
have a good harvest, the prospect of which instead 
of another famine which threatened us, would con- 
sole us, if anything could, for the miserable news 
we have from you. 

" By the bye, it seems evident I think, from the 
detail of the articles of capitulation, and from the 
improbability of an Austrian General taking such 
a responsibility upon himself, that the whole must 
have been arranged beforehand, and contingent 
orders sent from Vienna." 

"May 18(1800?). 

" I HAVE just a moment while the clerk is bind- 
ing up the despatches, to say that we are all well, 
which I suppose you may have heard already from 
my father and William. The William above men- 
tioned is, I hope, going on very well. I do not re- 



44 MEMOIR OF 

collect any immediate nonsense which you are not 
possessed of, except that Lady Laurie x has lent us 
one of our ancestors, in an old frame, which Quinton 
has been set to copy on a fine old black board, and 
the copy is now stuck up in the old frame and will 
be sent to her to find out if she can. 

" I have just this morning taken my first lesson 
in German in the Gazette with all the different 
stories of Mela's victory. 2 

" You must send us another, for I shall have 
finished this in two more lessons. It is Mr. Mender 
who has the credit of my tuition. 

" I send you a key for the boxes which Wickham 
has, and which we shall send you by the next mes- 
senger." 

«7#/a?3(i8oo?). 
" I OUGHT to take the ten minutes which I 
shall have before Lord Grenville sends back the 
despatches to tell you the news, if I could think of 
any. Oh, I'll tell you, for I have heard of nothing 
else every day after dinner. We have got a new 
Divorce Bill, which people are eager about, and 
more absurd than can be imagined, as my old friend 
Lord Mulgrave's speeches in the papers may per- 
haps have informed you already." 

After describing the affected indignation of the 
old " Will Honeycombs," who were anxious to be 
supposed interested in the subject, he adds — 

" You will conclude from this that I intend voting 
against the beau monde. I believe I shall ; but it 
will be more for the spite of the thing than for any 



1 Judith Hatley, a first cousin of Mr. Frere's father, married 
firstly, Mr. Wollaston, of Suffolk ; secondly, Col. Sir Robert 
Laurie, Baronet, of Maxwellton, Dumfries-shire. Through 
the Reynolds family, the Calthorps, and De Greys, the 
Hatleys traced their descent from Gundreda, daughter of 
William the Conqueror. 

2 Probably his successes against Massena before Genoa, in 
April, 1800. 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 45 

good I think it will do. Besides, I do not like to 
vote against Pitt the moment that he tells one, 
4 Now here's a question on which you may vote 
which way you will without being turned out.' I 
believe you must keep all this nonsense to your- 
self, for your present society, I apprehend, would 
belong to what our Norwich friend called the ' obsti- 
nate party.' By the bye, nothing can be more kind 
than Lord Minto's way of speaking of you, and 
everything about you. I ought to write to him, 
but it is very late, and if I sit up much longer to- 
night I shall be knocked up, and look like a devil 
to-morrow, at the birthday ; and then, what will be 
the use of my having ordered the light-blue silk 
coat, with breeches of the same, and steel buttons 
' to comply ' ? with which I conclude. 

" By the bye there are some copies of the Wur- 
temberg and Mentz Treaties, which will be sent if 
they come in in time from the printers, and which 
Lord Minto should present with suitable expres- 
sions." 

"July 11 (1800). 

" Dear Bartle, 

" It frequently happens between individuals 
corresponding at a distance, that the very point 
which the one party considers as too obvious to be 
mentioned is precisely that which the other is the 
most anxious about. To illustrate this by a familiar 
instance. It is not impossible that Lord Minto 
may at this moment be desirous to know whether 
his conduct has been approved, and whether we 
are satisfied with his project and with the expecta- 
tion of its immediate ratification, and you may still 
therefore be glad to hear that it was considered as 
the most welcome intelligence which we could pos- 
sibly receive. Pray what became of the parole 
certificates of General Grouchy and Perignan, vide 
your despatch of February 4th ? The French 
Commissary tells us that his government have 



46 MEMOIR OF 

been told that they had been transmitted here — 
we have never seen them. They likewise complain 
of Coilis's detention — as his release, in exchange 
for Mack, was a part of the arrangement upon 
which Don was released. Item, for family news, 
my father is gone out of town. My uncle is com- 
ing through town in his way to his new quarters 
at Farnham. Sir Robert (Laurie) is getting better, 
so is Hatley 1 — he is, or was a week ago, at Cardiff 
races, and I am going to get him into the new 
Military School, which will just suit him. Ted's 
intended spouse is Miss Greene 2 — we are all very 
well satisfied with what we hear of her — he has 
been in town too, and for some time wore his pan- 
taloons over his half-boots [a Whig innovation] in 
spite of remonstrance and example. Canning was 
married last Tuesday. He dined with me and was 
launched into futurity at about half-after seven, by 
the Rev. W. Leigh, with great composure. The 
clock strikes twelve, and I am very tired, and as I 
cannot recollect anything more which I have to tell 
you, I take it for granted that there is nothing. 
Stop a moment. We are going, I hope, to have a 
very good harvest, instead of the continuation of 
famine which was generally expected, and more- 
over, we are not much disheartened by the events 
in Italy and Germany, though the rascally funds 
had the impudence to rise upon it, taking it for 
granted that we must be driven to make peace, 
which is all they care about." 

Many years after, in 1844, describing Mr. Can- 



1 His sixth brother, James Hatley, well known in after 
years by his writings on the interpretation of Prophecy, and 
as the inventor of one of the most successful systems for 
teaching the blind to read : born 1779, died 1866. 

2 Eldest daughter of James Greene, of Turton Tower and 
Clayton Hall, Lancashire, M.P. for Arundel, representative of 
Humphrey Chetham, the founder of Chetham's Hospital and 
Library, Manchester, Sheriff of Lancashire, 1635, died 1653. 



JOHN HO OKI! AM FRERE. 47 

fling's marriage, Mr. Frere said — " I was to be best 
man, and Pitt, Canning, and Mr. Leig \, who was 
to read the service, dined with me before the mar- 
riage, which was to take place in Brook Street. 
We had a coach to drive there, and as we went 
through that narrow part, near what was then 
Swallow Street, a fellow drew up against the wall, 
to avoid being run over, and peering into the coach, 
recognized Pitt, and saw Mr. Leigh, who was in full 
canonicals, sitting opposite to him. The fellow ex- 
claimed, 'What, Billy Pitt ! and with a parson too!' 
I said, ' He thinks you are going to Tyburn to be 
hanged privately,' which was rather impudent of 
me ; but Pitt was too much absorbed, I believe in 
thinking of the marriage, to be. angry. After the 
ceremony, he was so nervous that he could not sign 
as witness, and Canning whispered to me to sign 
without waiting for him. He regarded the mar- 
riage as the one thing needed to give Canning the 
position necessary to lead a party, and this was the 
cause of his anxiety about it, which I would not 
have believed had I not witnessed it, though I knew 
how warm was the regard he had for Canning. Had 
Canning been Pitt's own son I do not think he 
could have been more interested in all that related 
to this marriage." 

In a letter of a few days later date, July 15, 1800, 
he says : — 

" I do not send you any news, partly because 
there is none, partly because I am too tired to sit 
up to write it if there was any, and partly in resent- 
ment for your silence, partly likewise because the 
messenger is waiting, and as he is an independent 
gentleman with East India despatches, 1 I do not 
like to detain him the half hour which it would take 



1 We are apt in these days to forget that during the French 
war, great as was our command of the seas, it was found 
necessary to organize a regular postal service for India, viA 



48 MEMOIR OF 

me to send you a coup politique et domestique. I 
will try it in an abridged form : Ted is to be mar- 
ried on Monday se'nnight the 28th instant without 
fail. William is set out for Roydon vid Cambridge, 
with law books and a determination to read them 
and to remain there till November next. Sir John 
and my lady 1 are setting off for Tenby somewhere 
near Swansea, purposing as I apprehend, to turn 
Ted's left wing, and to occupy those mountainous 
positions [the valley of Clydach in Breconshire] 
during the summer. 

" I remain here docketing and dispatching as 
usual, and as usual, 

" Your affectionate Brother, 

" J. H. Frere." 

His appointment as Minister at Lisbon was in 
contemplation when he wrote on August 8th, 1800: — 

" I have written a letter to Lord Minto, which he 
will probably show you. If you are at a loss to 
know what to make of it, I can only tell you that I 
really wish him to determine according to his own 
feeling and convenience, and that if he feels you 
any way a charge, which in his present situation, with 
all his family about him, he may very possibly do, 
without any fault of yours, he need not be afraid 
of throwing you upon the wide world, seeing that I 
shall be very glad to have you with me. I ought 
to tell you that I shall be able to have you esta- 
blished with me a Secretary of Legation in about 

Constantinople, Bagdad, and the Persian Gulf. A packet 
was sent every six weeks, by whatever route through the 
Continent was least liable to be interrupted, to Constantinople, 
and thence by Tartar post to the Persian Gulf, where the 
Company's cruisers kept up the communication with India. 
Ten rupees (£1) was the charge for a single letter from India, 
and the signature of the Chief Secretary to the Indian Govern- 
ment was necessary to authorize its transmission. 

1 His sister Jane, who was married to Admiral Sir John 
Orde, Bart., brother of the first Lord Bolton. 



JOHN II 00 A' HAM FJiERE. 49 

half a year or a little more. I did not mention 
this to Lord Minto, because I did not know how to 
do it without making it bear on one side or other 
of the question, which I was desirous of leaving in 
perfect equilibrio. If you should find that Lord 
Minto, of his own mere motion, is disposed to keep 
you with him in consideration of your past and ex- 
pected services, you will of course consider that my 
convenience is to give way to your improvement 
and advantage, which may certainly be much pro- 
moted by a further continuance at Vienna. 

" I have sent you the memoirs of Castle Rack- 
rent, and have to acknowledge the receipt of Mrs. 
Bunch. You forgot to tell me your incident for 
the German play. By the bye Coleridge has trans- 
lated Schiller's Piccolomini wonderfully well. I 
have lent it out, or I would send it you." 

The next letter enclosed, with a poetical version 
of his own, a retrenchment which he appears to 
have been ordered by Lord Grenville to send to 
Lord Minto, directing the refund of an unauthorized 
payment of ^500 to the Secretaries of his Mission, 
of whom Mr. Stratton was one. 1 



1 It was formerly customary when a treaty had been signed 
by a British Minister at a foreign court, to direct him to deliver 
a diamond snuff-box to the Minister with whom it was nego- 
tiated, and to draw on the office in Downing Street for .£500, 
which he was likewise directed to present to him for distri- 
bution among his Secretaries. These presents were reciprocal, 
and when received by the British Minister, the officials in 
Downing Street were in the habit of claiming them as their 
perquisites, and in two instances when treaties had been nego- 
tiated by Lord Henley, Lord Minto's predecessor, at Vienna, the 
Downing Street office claim had not been resisted, and the Sec- 
retary of Legation, Mr. Stratton, had been deprived of his dues. 
He stated the case to Lord Minto, who, on signing a treaty 
with Baron Thurgot in 1800, explained the controversy to him, 
and requested to be informed expressly what were the Em- 
peror's intentions with regard to the disposal of the ,£500 ? and 
having been told it was intended for the Secretaries of his 
Mission, in consideration of the extra labour the negotiation 

E 



So MEMOIR OF 

Sep. 2nd, 1800. 

" I send you the enclosed little jeu cTesprit, which 
has attracted considerable notice in the official and 
diplomatic world. You may tell Stratton that I 
have used him very well, for I was authorized to 
give him a jobation, as you will see by the enclosed 
docket, which was returned with Lord Minto's 
letter. 

" Pray assure Lord Minto that I bear no ill-will 
to his messengers, and that if I give them up to 

Mr. B , it is in consequence of a determination 

(which I made when I came into the office, and 
which I have always had reason to congratulate 
myself upon — namely) to give up the whole pan- 
demonium of messengers and couriers to the un- 
restrained coercion of one single arch-fiend, without 
check or control on my part. If I had had any 
taste for such subjects, I might, I believe, have 
spent a week in hearing complaints and insinua- 



had thrown on them, he distributed it accordingly. Downing 
Street retorted by the Under Secretary's writing to Lord 
M into (at the same time with Lord Grenville's official directing 
him to draw for ^500) that, as a similar sum would be given 
him by the Court of Vienna for the Foreign Office, he must 
apply that to the purpose for which he was directed to draw ; 
returning it to Baron Thurgot as the gratuity from the British 
Court to his Secretaries, and abstaining from drawing the 
bill ; which would leave the Foreign Office in possession of the 
like sum destined for them. Lord Minto replied he had re- 
ceived nothing for the Foreign Office up to that date, and that in 
the meantime he would obey his instructions and draw on them. 
Lord Grenville was then appealed to, and declared in favour 
of the Foreign Office, as detailed in the jeu d 7 esprit. But 
they further dishonoured Lord Minto's bill, without consulting 
Lord Grenville. The bill came back protested. Lord Minto 
remonstrated so effectually that Lord Grenville abandoned 
the Foreign Office claim, covering his retreat by an order 
that thenceforward no such presents should be received unless 
destined for gentlemen of his office. To soften off the asperity 
of his remonstrance, Lord Minto wrote an eclogue between 
his Secretaries, and sent it with the original draft to Lord 
Grenville. 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 51 

tions, and I might have filled a long letter with 
what the messengers have said, and how they re- 
monstrated in a body, and reports of the insolent 

language of the couriers to Mr. B , and how they 

refused to take the money, and desired to have 
despatches and three horses a-piece. There were 
really materials for an epic poem, if I had collected 
the whole ; but whether I disliked the subject, or 
saw no chance of getting to the rights of it, the 
fact is, that except one ineffectual attempt to per- 
suade one of the men that he had no right to com- 
plain for being sent home on the same footing with 
the office messengers, I was glad to keep entirely 
out of the way, and did so with great success. 
Seriously speaking, however — for the subject be- 
comes a serious one to me — when Lord Minto 
appears to be really interested, or to suspect a want 
of interest on my part in what concerns him, you 
must, I think, see the utter impossibility of my 
attempting to interfere in the disputes between the 
messengers, particularly in opposition to the person 
who, ever since I have been in the office, has taken 
the whole trouble of this sort off my hand ; the 
familiar instance of an upper and a lower servant, 
though not applicable in comparison, may serve as 
an illustration of the impolicy, and, in this case, the 
injustice of such a proceeding, and the argument 
here is certainly an argument a fortiori. I must 
conclude. My mother, I suppose, has sent all 
family news. 

DRAFT TO LORD MINTO. 

My Lord, when I open'd your letter, 

I confess I was perfectly stunn'd ; 
But I find myself now something better, 

Since I'm ordered to bid you refund. 

'Tis a very bad scrape you've got into, 

Which your friends must all wish you had shunn'd, 

Says Lord Grenville, ' Prepare to Lord Minto 
Dispatches to bid him refund? 



52 MEMOIR OF 

Mr. Hammond, who smiles at your cunning, 

On the subject amusingly punn'd ; 
Says he, " They're so proud of their funning, 

'Twill be pleasant to see them refund d." 

As for Stratton, he ought for his sin, to 

Be sent to some wild Sunderbund. 
But we'll pardon him still, if Lord Minto 

Will instantly make him refund. 

Believe me, I don't mean to hurt you, 

But if you'd avoid being dunn'd, 
Of necessity making a virtue, 

With the best grace you can, you'll refund. 

Let the Snuff Box belong to Lord Minto ; 

But as for the five hundred fiund, 1 
I'll be judged by Almeida 2 or Pinto, 3 

If his Chancery must not refund. 

Postscript. 

There are letters from India which mention, 

Occurrences at Roh-il-cund ; 
But I'll not distract your attention, 

Lest I make you forget to refund. 

Lord Carlisle's new play is the Story 

Of Tancred, and Fair Sigismund, 
Our last news is the taking of Gore"e, 

But our best is, that you must refund." 

In October, 1 800, Mr Frere was appointed Envoy- 
Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Portugal. 
The following letter was addressed to his brother, 
who had in the meantime returned to England 
from Vienna : — 

" I am very glad to hear of you in England, and 
am particularly desirous of having you here as soon 
as. possible. You must see Lord Hawkesbury. I 



1 Scotice pro "pound." — J. H. F. 

2 The Portuguese Minister in London. 

3 The Portuguese Minister for Foreign Affairs, Lisbon, 
whither Mr. Frere had just been appointed Envoy. 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 53 

trust he will appoint you Secretary of Legation. It 
is an appointment which is absolutely necessary 
here, where the despatches cannot be entrusted to 
a common clerk, and where one cannot always have 
gentlemen to assist one, for assistance' sake, as 
Ainslie " has done hitherto. He has, however, 
heard accounts of his father's health which make 
him wish to return. I must not detain him, and I 
cannot go on alone, and I have no right to ask you 
to come unless I can get you made Secretary 
of Legation ; therefore, the premises duly consi- 
dered, I trust Lord Hawkesbury will appoint you. 
I shall write to him this post." 

" P.S. You must come though, at any rate, and 
directly." 

"July 2o7/z"(i8oi?). 

[Lisbon ?] 

While he was at Lisbon a change of Ministry, 
which took all Europe by surprise, substituted Mr. 
Addington for Pitt as Prime Minister, and Lord 
Hawkesbury for Lord Grenville as Secretary of State 
for Foreign Affairs. Mr. Frere's view of the reasons 
that induced Pitt so unexpectedly to resign a power 
still, to all appearance, supreme, was briefly this : 
In the face of the national distress from deficient 
harvests, England was left, by the defection of 
allies, absolutely alone to carry on the contest with 
all Europe. It was impossible to continue the war 
unless the country were satisfied that no other 
course was consistent with our existence as an inde- 
pendent nation. It was necessary, therefore, to test 
the willingness of France to make and maintain a 
lasting peace. But Pitt himself had no belief in the 
sincerity of Napoleon's desire to consent to any real 
peace without inflicting serious humiliation on the 
only nation which had proved herself capable of 
maintaining a contest with France and all the rest 

1 Sir Robert Ainslie. 



54 MEMOIR OF 

of Europe combined against her. He felt that to 
make a transitory and illusory peace would seri- 
ously damage his own power to renew the war with 
effect, and expose him to the charge of having 
caused the failure which he believed must be the 
inevitable result. He therefore determined to leave 
to other hands the credit of making and, if possible, 
maintaining such a peace. Addington's ministry 
afforded the means of doing this without perma- 
nently deranging any of those combinations which 
were necessary to re-form a strong war ministry, 
when the hostilities which Pitt believed to be in- 
evitable, should again be renewed by the restless 
ambition of Napoleon. 

Speaking of this period many years afterwards, 
Mr Frere said : — " When Addington became Prime 
Minister, Pitt wanted Canning to remain in office ; 
but, such was Canning's contempt for the whole 
set, and his dislike to the peace of Amiens, that 
nothing would induce him to do so, though his 
refusal led to a temporary coolness with Pitt. I 
have no doubt Pitt foresaw what would happen. 
He did not wish to have to make the peace which 
was inevitable, and knew he must come in again 
soon after it was made ; and he wished, on his 
return, to find Canning in office, where he might 
have retained him (without difficulty from his aris- 
tocratic supporters), but Canning would not let him. 

" I was obliged to remind Canning of it after- 
wards, when he was crusty with Lord Dudley for 
much the same thing. I told him, ' Dudley is now 
doing to you what you did to Pitt — refusing to 
follow a lead the necessity of which you see, and he 
does not.' It is the hardest of a minister's trials 
not always to be able to acknowledge his own 
weakness, and give his reasons in such a case." 

On the 6th of September, 1802, Mr. Frere was 
transferred from Portugal to Spain, where he re- 
mained as Minister for nearly two years. 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 55 

To understand his position at this period, and 
the circumstances under which he subsequently- 
revisited Spain, it is necessary briefly to revert to 
the course which the Spanish Government had 
taken in the great contest with revolutionary 
France. 

In 1793, when the French Republic declared war 
against Spain, the Court and Government of Charles 
IV. presented almost every evil feature of effete 
despotism. Corruption pervaded all branches of 
the administration, colonial as well as domestic ; 
commerce and industry were decaying, unworthy 
favourites ruled at a shameless Court, and the dis- 
organized armies and navies of Spain, under the 
command of court intriguers, were wholly incapable 
of such enterprises as, in earlier days, had raised 
her to the first rank among the military powers 
of the civilized world. But all the old forms re- 
mained ; the spirit of the people had not yet been 
broken by foreign invasion, and the nation at large 
still imagined itself as capable of influencing the 
destinies of Europe as in the days of its early 
glory. _ 

Spain, however, contributed little to the pressure 
which the governments of Europe brought to bear 
at this time on France ; and the revolutionary 
leaders had their hands too fully occupied in other 
directions to make any serious efforts against Spain. 
In July, 1795, Spain brought her share of the lan- 
guid contest to an inglorious close, and made peace 
with France. A year later she entered into an 
offensive and defensive alliance with the Republic, 
and, as a consequence, war was declared with Eng- 
land. 

Spain contributed large sums of money, which 
were very acceptable to the exhausted French trea- 
sury, and fitted out a formidable fleet, which, on 
the 14th February, 1797, was signally defeated by 
Sir John Jarvis off Cape St. Vincent. From that 



56 MEMOIR OF 

date to the peace of Amiens in 1802, Spain took 
but a subordinate part in the contest. 

When, after the cessation of hostilities, Mr Frere 
arrived as British Minister at Madrid, he found 
little prejudice against England on the part of 
those who best represented the worthier elements 
of Spanish character at the Court of Charles IV. ; 
but such men were in a woful minority — all real 
power was already in the hands of Don Manuel 
Godoy, the notorious favourite of the King and his 
worthless Queen. 

There was much in Mr. Frere's character and 
tastes which rendered him peculiarly acceptable to 
Spaniards who valued their national independence, 
and were, like all true Spaniards, proud of their 
national glories. The favourite and his creatures 
however had little reason to love the English, and 
there were among the courtiers many traitors to 
the national cause ready for any intrigue in' the 
interests of France. 

Few of Mr. Frere's private letters relating to this 
period have been preserved, but they bear testi- 
mony to the diligence with which he had applied 
himself to the study of Spanish literature, and the 
friendships which he formed with men of letters, to 
more than one of whom he appears to have been a 
generous and discriminating patron. 

From this time, also, dates his friendship with 
Romana, which was afterwards productive of valu- 
able results to both England and Spain. 

Don Pedro Caro y Sureda Romana was born at 
Majorca in 1761, and had been a soldier from his 
youth. 

Speaking of him in 1 844, Mr. Frere said : — 
"Romana and I were friends from the very first 
day we met ; he was then a Lieutenant-General 
with the Court, and it was he who enabled me, 
within a very short time after my arrival at Madrid, 
to find out exactly how all parties stood, and to 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 57 

send home a correct account of them. I remember 
talking with him over the men who, in the event 
of a rupture with France, might have the command 
of the Spanish army. Romana, after disposing of 
them all, and showing how utterly unfit they were 
for command, said : — ' Depend upon it, the man 
who can command an army of Spaniards is now 
coursing the hares in La Mancha, or fighting bulls 
in Andalusia.' And so it proved ; for Albuquerque, 
who was the only man who could have commanded 
the army, was just a country gentleman of the kind 
Romana described." 

" He once told me, as an instance of the dislike 
of old-fashioned Spaniards to parsimony, that when 
a young man travelling with his uncle, he locked 
the saddle-bag which contained all the money they 
had for their journey, and got a severe lecture for 
his pains from the old man ; — ' to think that any 
Hidalgo of Spain should lock up his money !' " 

But to return to 1804. Only the first mutterings 
of the coming storm were then audible in Spain. 
The hollow truce which had followed the peace of 
Amiens came to an end when England declared 
war against France on the 18th May, 1803, and the 
strife was resumed on terms which made it clear 
that no real peace could be hoped for till one or 
other of the combatants should be thoroughly 
humbled. 

During the short breathing time which inter- 
vened, both nations had rapidly recovered from the 
exhaustion caused by the previous contest. 

France had in many ways added to her real 
strength, and her people were more than ever con- 
vinced of the vast increase in aggressive power 
which had followed the consolidation of the revolu- 
tionary forces under the iron will of the First Consul, 
and which almost justified his pretensions to be the 
arbiter of Europe. 

The English, also, had tasted the blessings of 



58 MEMOIR OF 

peace. The proceedings of Napoleon during the 
cessation of hostilities produced, however, a more 
general and profound conviction than at any period 
of the war, that there was no other course open for 
England, than either to continue the contest till the 
ambition of Napoleon should be effectually crushed, 
or to submit to the same sacrifice of independence 
which had placed all his continental neighbours at 
his feet. 

Thus the war was resumed, with the resolve oh 
both sides that, whatever its cost, it must be fought 
out " to the bitter end ; " and when once the British 
nation had made up its mind on this point, it 
speedily became impatient of the want of vigour 
which marked the war policy of the Addington 
Ministry. The conviction gradually gained ground 
that no man was so able to direct the national 
efforts as he who, with such unflinching courage, 
had maintained the contest in its earlier stages, and 
who had never wavered in his opinions as to the 
only course consistent with national honour and 
permanent independence. Mr. Pitt returned to 
office in May, 1804, but Lord Grenville could not 
be induced to resume his former post at the Foreign 
Office, which was filled by Lord Harrowby. 

For some time after the renewal of war between 
England and France, Spain professed her intention 
to remain neutral. But if any such hope ever really 
actuated the men who then ruled at Madrid, it must 
have been speedily dispelled. Indeed the observ- 
ance of real neutrality seems, under the circum- 
stances, to have been impossible. By the treaty of 
St. Ildefonso, in 1796, Spain had formed an alliance, 
offensive and defensive, with France ; and by a 
secret convention of 19th October, 1803, the sub- 
sidy to be paid by Spain to France was fixed at 
^2,880,000. Thus the action of Spain was virtually 
identified with that of France. But the English 
Government was assured that Spain, in agreeing to 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 59 

the subsidy, the amount of which was at first un- 
known, was acting under compulsion, and not from 
any ill-will to England. It was therefore agreed 
that a small and temporary advance of money by 
Spain to France should not be considered as en- 
titling England to declare war against Spain. 
Later in the year, however, when the real amount 
of the subsidy was rumoured, the British Minister 
intimated to the Spanish Government that any 
agreement to furnish a subsidy of such magnitude 
would in itself be considered a declaration of hos- 
tility against Great Britain. Mr. Frere stated in 
his note : — " His Majesty is perfectly sensible of the 
difficulties of the situation in which Spain is placed, 
as well by reason of her ancient ties with France as 
on account of the character and habitual conduct of 
that power and of its chief. These considerations 
have induced him to act with forbearance to a 
certain degree, and have inclined him to overlook 
such pecuniary sacrifices as should not be of suffi- 
cient magnitude to force attention from their politi- 
cal effects." 

He then declares, " That pecuniary advances, 
such as are stipulated in the recent convention with 
France, cannot be considered by the British Govern- 
ment but as a war subsidy — a succour the most 
efficacious, the best adapted to the wants and situ- 
ation of the enemy, the most prejudicial to the 
interests of the British subjects, and the most dan- 
gerous to the British dominions ; in fine, more than 
equivalent for every other species of aggression." 
After adding that imperious necessity compelled 
His Britannic Majesty to make this declaration, 
Mr. Frere intimated "that the passage of French 
troops through the territories of Spain would be 
considered a violation of neutrality, and that the 
British Government would feel compelled to take 
the most decisive measures in consequence of such 
an event." 



6o MEMOIR OF 

The Spanish minister replied : — " Although the 
Spanish Cabinet is penetrated with the truth that 
the idea of aiding France is compatible with that of 
neutrality towards Great Britain, yet it has thought 
that it could better combine these two- objects by a 
method which, without being disagreeable to France, 
strips her neutrality towards Great Britain of that 
hostile exterior which military succours necessarily 
present." 

In February Mr. Frere presented a further remon- 
strance on the ground of partiality shown to the 
French in permitting the sale of prizes, and com- 
plained of the naval armaments in the Spanish 
harbours. His note stated : — " I am ordered to 
declare to you that the system of forbearance on 
the part of England depends entirely on the cessa- 
tion of every naval armament within the ports of 
this kingdom, and that I am expressly forbidden to 
prolong my residence here if, unfortunately, thts 
condition should be rejected. It is also indispens- 
able that the sale of prizes brought into the ports 
of this kingdom should cease, otherwise I am to 
consider all negotiations as at an end, and I am to 
think only of returning to my superiors." 

It cannot be supposed that a correspondence of 
this kind rendered the presence of the British 
Minister at Madrid at all agreeable to Godoy, the 
" Prince of the Peace," who at that time absolutely 
ruled the councils of the Spanish Court, and who 
seemed indifferent to every consideration of national 
honour, provided his own personal ascendancy were 
secured. It was rumoured in London that the 
British Minister would be unable to remain any 
longer at Madrid ; and, alluding to these reports, 
Mr. Frere's brother* George 1 wrote to his mother in 
July:- 



1 His third brother, of Lincoln's Inn and Twyford House, 
Herts: born 1774, and died 1854. He was through life the 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 61 

" I have great pleasure in assuring you that I 
hear but one opinion respecting my brother's cor- 
respondence with the ' Prince of Peace ' — namely, 
that it establishes his character for spirit and 
ability, and exposes very completely and very 
dexterously the stupid pusillanimity of his an- 
tagonist. It cannot occasion his recall, though it 
may very probably, I think, make him desirous of 
coming home sooner than he otherwise would have 
done, because a breach of this kind with a great 
man, with whom he had before maintained the best 
possible understanding, must render his continu- 
ance at the same Court less agreeable. I do not, 
however, understand that he is expected here at 
present." 

On the 1st August Mr. George Frere again wrote 
that he had heard at the Foreign Office : — 

" My two brothers were well, at Madrid, on the 
6th of last month. My eldest brother is coming 
home immediately, and Bartle remains Charge 
d'Affaires. Mr. Wellesley is going to take my 
eldest brother's place. There is no disapprobation 
of his conduct that I can learn ; but he has for 
some time past been desiring permission to return 
home, and it is obvious that there cannot be that 
cordiality between him and the ' Prince of Peace,' 
which is desirable. I hope he will immediately 
be employed when he does return, and in some 
ostensible situation, which may serve to mark an 
approbation of his conduct." 



trusted friend and counsellor in all matters of business, of his 
elder brother, who used to say, " George had as much ability, 
and more perseverance, and better habits of business, than 
any of us ; if he would have taken, as I wished, to public life, 
or to the Bar, he might have been a Secretary of State or 
Lord Chancellor. He always had twice the stuff in him of 

his old friends and cotemporaries and " (naming 

two law lords). 



62 MEMOIR OF 

In August Mr. Frere left Madrid to return to 
England. 

On his journey to Corunna to embark he observed 
unmistakable evidence of preparations for war, 
which were at variance with the pacific assurances 
of the Spanish Ministry. From Salamanca he 
wrote to his brother Bartle, on the 31st of August, 
as "just setting out from this seat of learning, 
where I have passed some days not unpleasantly." 
Arrived at Corunna, on September 10th he writes 
to his brother : — " I deferred writing to you till 
I should get to my journey's end ; and now I 
find Admiral Cochrane wants to have me on board 
immediately . . . My journey has been al- 
together pleasant, and has furnished me with some 
curious remarks, which I shall endeavour to write 
down on board the ' Illustrious.' " 

The following is his letter, written next day, from 
on board the Admiral's flag-ship : — 

" ' Illustrious' 

[Off Corunna] 

u Sep.\\th,\%o\. 

" Dear Bartle, 

" The appearance of things here is very sus- 
picious and alarming, to say the least of it. An 
armament is going on, and troops embarking, 
which is directly contrary to the principle of the 
status quo which was admitted by Cevallos, and 
which was understood to be settled as the condition 
to be complied with by Spain as long as England 
forbore to attack her. We are apprehensive of 
ships coming round from Cadiz. Duff should be 
written to to send advices of what is going on 
[there] both [to the officer] here, and to you at 
Madrid. You must remonstrate against these pre- 
parations, and if you will look back to Cevallo's 
note, you will find one in which he expressly agrees 
to remain in unarmed statu quo. 

****** 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 63 

"It will be a civil thing in you to send the Eng- 
lish newspapers to Admiral Cochrane ; he gets the 
' Courier de Londres.'" 

He subsequently went home in the " Naiad," 
from on board which he wrote to his brother . — 

" Before I go on further, I must tell you what 
ship I am going on board of ; it is the ' Naiad,' 
Captain Wallis, who is used to be unlucky with his 
ambassadors, having nearly drowned Tom Gren- 
ville. The 'Illustrious' is to remain here. We 
expect to be home in two or three days if the wind 
holds. At this moment it is very fair, and likely to 
last, as they think. I have opened your dispatch ; 
the tone of Cevallo's note is, indeed, striking. If 
you could find any of the little concioneros, and an 
opportunity to send it, it would give me an oppor- 
tunityof paying anattention to Sir Charles Hamilton, 
who reads Spanish, and wishes to get one of them. 
I do not know whether you know that he is captain 
of the ' Illustrious,' and that I should have gone 
with him if he had not been detained, and the 
' Naiad ' ordered home instead. It should be sent 
to him here." 

Later in September, after Mr. Frere had sailed 
for England, the British Government learnt that 
detachments of French troops, amounting in all to 
1,500 men, had passed from Bayonne to Ferrol, 
where a French squadron was lying ; and that the 
Spanish Government had ordered the immediate 
armament at that port of three ships of the line, 
and several smaller vessels ; that similar orders had 
been sent to Cadiz and Carthagena ; that three 
ships of the line had been sent round from Cadiz 
to Ferrol, and instructions given to arm the packets 
as in time of war ; that within a month eleven ships 
of the line would be ready for sea at Ferrol, where 
soldiers were daily arriving from France, and there 
seemed every reason to believe that the Spanish 
Government only awaited the arrival of the treasure 



64 MEMOIR OF 

frigates from America to commence hostilities 
against Great Britain. 

Mr. Bartle Frere presented upon this a strong 
remonstrance to the Government at Madrid, in the 
following terms : — 

" That the total cessation of all naval prepara- 
tions in the ports of Spain having been the principal 
condition required by England, and agreed to by 
Spain, as the price of the forbearance of Great 
Britain, the present violation of this condition can 
be considered in no other light but as a hostile 
aggression on the part of Spain, and a defiance 
given to England. These preparations become still 
more menacing from a squadron of the enemy being 
in the port where they are carrying on. In no case 
can England be indifferent to the armament which 
is preparing, and I entreat you to consider the dis- 
astrous consequences which will ensue if the misery 
which presses so heavily on this country be com- 
pleted by plunging it unnecessarily into a ruinous 
war." 

To this note ' the Prince of the Peace ' replied that 
" the King of Spain had never thought of being 
wanting to the agreement entered into with the 
British Government. The cessation of all naval 
armaments against Great Britain shall be observed 
as heretofore ; and whatever information to the 
contrary may have been received is wholly un- 
founded, and derogatory to the honour of the 
Spanish nation." 

In the mean time Mr. Frere had arrived in Eng- 
land. Of his reception there he gives the following 
account in a letter written to his brother Bartle at 
Madrid :— 

" My Dear Brother, 

" I do not know whether I shall have time 
to say all I have to say, and I will begin with the 
most essential. I have been perfectly well received 



JOHN HOOK II AM FRERE. 65 

by the King, with an appearance of real kindness 
and interest about me. I have seen Pitt for a 
moment only, and not alone, and was very kindly 
received by him also. He is now out of town. 
Harrowby would have received me kindly likewise, 
but I would not let him. I gave him a lecture, but 
shall admit him to a reconciliation shortly. He is 
disposed, I believe, to make amends by doing some- 
thing for you. For myself, I have, after due re- 
flection upon the folly and meanness of people (not 
three of whom would understand my retirement as 
anything but an unavoidable retreat from disgrace), 
and, moreover, being mollified by the King, and 
thirdly, and more especially, to distinguish myself 

from , and fourthly and lastly, for fear that 

fellow should be a Privy Councillor before 

me, I have, I say, determined to become a member 
of that learned body if it is offered me, which I can 
have no doubt that it will." 

After a number of reasons, in a similar tone of 
banter, for not seeking the honours of the Bath, 
which he had reason to believe might have been 
added, had he expressed a wish for them, as a 
further mark that his conduct in his very difficult 
position at Madrid was approved by the King and 
the Ministry, he proceeds : — 

"The only objection to this is that, in Spain — ; 
but what signifies ? I was going to say — that, in 
Spain, 'Consejero di Estadowith a pension,' sounds 
something like a forced retreat ; however, I flatter 
myself that the thing will be known to be other- 
wise, especially if Woronzof writes to Moravief. 
He was at Saltram, 1 when I called there to see that 
noble and new-married peer, Lord Boringdon f and 



1 Lord Boringdon's seat in Devonshire. 

2 John Parker, second Lord Boringdon, married, June 1804, 
a daughter of Lord Westmorland. He was, in 181 5, created 
Viscount Boringdon and Earl of Morley. 

F 



66 MEMOIR OF 

when I went to Weymouth I found him paying his 
duty to the real King (you do not know that Bor- 
ingdon's name, or rather one of them, is King). 
He happened to be with Harrowby when I called 
upon him. Wellesley is to go out if anybody 

p-QpC " ^ ^fc % vf: 

After some directions regarding his servants, 
furniture, &c., at Madrid, he proceeds : — 

" With respect to your instructions, which I ap- 
prove of, there is only one point, in the last page 
but one, which I think would place us in the neces- 
sity of giving a declaration of our intention with 
respect to Spain, in return for the communication of 
their engagements towards France ; but Hammond 
and I are both of opinion that this point of your 
instructions would be effectually fulfilled by con- 
fining the demand of explanation to the point of 
whether any or what assistance, other than money, 
has been stipulated to be afforded to France during 
the present war, as by this we may avoid the 
demand of an explanation in return. I am only 
returned from Weymouth and Southill (Canning's 
place) since last night, and have not yet seen either 
George or my sisters. My last stay here was only 
one day, and entirely occupied with Cabinet &c. 
Mulgrave was, as I conjectured, the author of all 
this brouillamini. 

" My mother writes me word that my father is 
very well, and writes herself in good spirits. 

" Excuse me to Moravief for not writing to him ; 
but Hammond is pressing and the messenger 
waiting. 

" Yours affectionately, 

"Sunday, 30 Sepr., 11 A. M." "J. H. FRERE." 

In a postscript he gives some directions regarding 
Spanish books and messages to his friends Mr. and 
Mrs. Hunter, at Madrid, and adds : — 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 67 

" I saw Lady Erroll 1 last night ; she does not 
give a very good account of herself. I am going to 
see her again this morning. You are in very high 
favour." 

The misunderstanding with Lord Harrowby ap- 
pears to have arisen from an unfounded report, 
earlier in the year, that Mr. Frere had left Madrid 
after a violent difference with the " Prince of the 
Peace," and without waiting for recall by his own 
Government. Under date May 12th, 1804, there 
is an entry in Lord Malmesbury's diary to this 
effect : — 

" Frere has actually left Madrid, and appointed 
his brother cliargi des affaires of his own head, and 
without any orders from home. His despatches 
state a conversation in which he differed violently 
with the ' Prince of Peace ;' but nothing can justify 
such an unauthorized step." 2 

That Lord Malmesbury had been misinformed is 
clear from the fact that Mr. Frere did not leave till 
more than four months afterwards, and his position 
is explained by a further entry in Lord Malmes- 
bury's diary in October : — 

" About the end of September Frere returned 
from Spain, and I had a great deal of very long and 
interesting conversation with him during the first 
week in October. He states Spain on the eve of a 
revolution — not a French, but Spanish revolution, 
so very unpopular are the Court and Government, 
that is to say, the Queen and the ' Prince of Peace."' 

" I asked him, supposing we had 20,000 dispos- 



1 This lady, whom he subsequently married in 1816, was 
Elizabeth Jemima Blake, daughter of Joseph Blake, Esq., of 
Ardfry, co. Galway, and sister of the first Lord Wallscourt. 
She was at this time widow of George, fifteenth Earl of 
Erroll. 

2 " Diaries and Correspondence of James Harris, first Earl 
of Malmesbury," edited by his grandson the third Earl. 
Bentley, 1 844, vol. iv. p. 305. 



68 MEMOIR OF 

able men, whether such a force would be equal to 
produce this Spanish revolution, and to prevent 
Buonaparte from availing himself of it. Frere did 
not doubt it. He said the people were more anti- 
French than ever, and if they had ministers in 
whom they confided, and the King left to himself, 
he was persuaded, with the sort of force I mentioned, 
Spain might be saved, and become a close, steady, 
and most useful friend and ally to England. Frere 
was much hurt at his being recalled ; said he could 
have effected anything in Spain, and that the order- 
ing him away was as unwise towards the public as 
unfair towards him. (Allowances must always be 
made when a man, even an honest and good one 
like Frere, argues his own cause.)" 1 

In the debate which took place some months 
afterwards, on the nth February, 1805, relative to 
the war with Spain, Mr. Pitt explained the circum- 
stances under which it had, in the year previous, 
been proposed to recall Mr. Frere ; expressing at the 
same time the sense which the ministry entertained 
of the ability with which he had acted in a very 
difficult position. 

After describing the hostile character of the en- 
gagements into which Spain had entered with 
France, and enlarging on the unusual forbearance 
shown by Great Britain to Spain, and on our sin- 
cere anxiety not to press hardly on a power which 
we believed to be acting under a sense of imperious 
necessity and not from ill-will, Mr. Pitt said : — 

" Desirous, however, of affording every facility 
and removing every obstacle to an amicable ar- 
rangement, it was resolved to recall Mr. Frere, in 
consequence of circumstances having occurred that 
made it impossible for him any longer to communi- 
cate personally with the ' Prince of Peace.' Upon 
the nature of that difference, which has no relation 

1 " Malmesbury Diaries," vol. iv. p. 330. 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 69 

to the present subject, it is not necessary for me to 
enlarge. In justice to Mr. Frere, however, I must 
say that it arose, without any fault on his part, from 
a most unprovoked, unwarrantable conduct in that 
person who, though without ostensible office, is 
known to have the most leading influence in the 
councils of Spain. Nevertheless, much as Ministers 
respected the talents and were sensible of the ser- 
vices of that gentleman who had so ably filled the 
place of Ambassador to the Court of Madrid during 
a difficult and critical period, they were determined 
that no collateral obstacles should stand in the way 
of a friendly termination of discussions in which the 
public interest was so much concerned. They had 
reasons of policy for not driving matters precipi- 
tately to extremity, and, reserving the right of war 
should circumstances demand its exercise, they 
continued to leave an opening for conciliation and 
arrangement. 

" It was intended to send another gentleman to 
succeed Mr. Frere, the latter returning home on 
leave of absence. The same vessel, however, which 
brought Mr. Frere home on the 17th September, 
brought letters from Admiral Cochrane, which 
proved in the clearest manner the violation of that 
condition on which the forbearance of His Majesty's 
Government had particularly been founded." 1 

Speaking, in after life, of his intercourse with 
Lord Malmesbury about this time, Mr. Frere said : — 

" He was very kind to me as a young man, and 
when I returned first from Spain. He had seen a 
great deal of diplomatic life, and gave me some 
excellent advice, which I afterwards found of great 
use. Among other things, the use of rascals in 
doing any dirty piece of work, which it may be 
necessary to have done. He said ' it was of the 
utmost importance never to mix up yourself in any 

1 " Pitt's Speeches," ed. 18 17, vol. iii. pp. 395-6. 



70 MEMOIR OF 

such business. You could always meet with foreign 
adventurers ready for anything of the kind.' It 
was old advice, and he quoted a Greek proverb, to 
the effect that you may often have to act — 

' Not with rascals altogether, 
Nor without a rascal either.' 

You must sometimes be connected with such fellows. 
The great art is to know how far and where you must 
use them. 

" Lord Malmesbury used also to point out a 
truth which we are very apt to forget, in judging of 
the feelings of continental nations towards us, that 
they are jealous of England's commercial ascen- 
dancy, not apprehensive of military aggression, 
with any view to mere extension of our terri- 
tory. You will find plenty of evidence of this in 
Lord Malmesbury's diaries and dispatches, whether 
he is writing of Russia, of Germany, or of France, 
and of times anterior to the French Revolution. 
Catherine of Russia had the feeling nearly as 
strongly as Napoleon. Napoleon's plans for ex- 
cluding English commerce from the continent 
would have been generally popular, had his mea- 
sures for enforcing his decrees not been carried out 
so despotically that they were almost as insulting 
to the continental nations as to England." 

The Ministry had signified their full approval of 
Mr. Frere's conduct, in the very difficult and deli- 
cate position in which he was placed at Madrid, by 
making him a Privy Councillor, and granting him a 
pension. He did not immediately seek re-employ- 
ment abroad, nor take any steps to re-enter Parlia- 
ment or public life at home ; and before his suc- 
cessor could arrive at Madrid, hostilities were 
precipitated by an unlucky accident, which for a 
time deprived England of her vantage ground as 
the injured and forbearing party in the precarious 
neutrality which had with so much difficulty been 



JOHN HO OKI! AM FRERE. 71 

maintained since the renewal of the war between 
England and France. The naval armaments were 
not stopped by the Spanish Government, as pro- 
mised in their replies to Mr. Bartle Frere, and the 
orders given by the British Cabinet to their ad- 
mirals in the Mediterranean and on the Spanish 
coast, led to the detention off Cadiz of four Spanish 
treasure frigates, the safe arrival of which in a 
Spanish port had been long expected, as likely to 
be followed by an explicit declaration of hostilities 
on the part of the Spanish government. 

The intercepting force of British frigates was 
barely equal to that of the Spaniards, who conse- 
quently refused to submit to detention, and an 
engagement ensued, in the course of which one 
Spanish frigate blew up, with considerable loss of 
life, and the rest were captured. This occurred on 
the 5 th October, two days only after the date of 
the Spanish note already quoted, which reiterated 
former promises for a cessation of all naval arma- 
ments, and while the British Charg6 d'Affaires was 
still at Madrid. 

War was formally declared by Spain on the 12th 
December ; and the circumstances under which the 
final breach occurred, gave to it at first more of the 
character of a contest in defence of Spanish national 
honour, than if it had been forced on, as must sooner 
or later have been the case, by French pressure. 1 

The rupture with Spain placed at the disposal of 
Napoleon a most important addition to his means 
for carrying on the war against England. At this 
time, his thoughts and resources were mainly de- 
voted to equip the vast army which he had concen- 
trated round Boulogne, and to provide it with a 
flotilla, and all other means necessary for the inva- 
sion of England. The one thing needed was such 
a fleet as should enable him effectually to sweep 

1 Vide " Alison," vol. v. chap. 38. 



72 MEMOIR OF 

the channel, and, "for but fifteen days," to remain 
master of the sea. This, he felt assured, would 
enable him to land an army of 150,000 men, com- 
plete with all artillery and munitions of war on the 
English coast ; and once there, he never doubted 
his own power to strike a decisive and mortal blow 
at the independence of his great enemy. 

But hitherto the creation of such a fleet as could 
give him even a momentary command of the chan- 
nel, had baffled all Napoleon's energy and resources. 
Each separate French squadron was hopelessly 
shut up in its own port by the indefatigable Eng- 
lish sea-captains ; and while the arduous blockad- 
ing service created and improved the best class of 
British sailors, the French seamen lost heart, as 
every month of enforced idleness debarred them 
from the practice necessary to give them confidence 
in the hour of trial. 

The Spanish fleet still ranked third in numerical 
strength among the navies of Europe ; and the 
curse of long misgovernment had told less on its 
efficiency than on that of other branches of the ad- 
ministration. Spain could recruit her sailors from 
among hardy mariners, practised in battling alike 
with tropical hurricanes, and with the fierce pirates 
of many a distant colonial sea. Her captains were 
used to long voyages to Manilla and Peru, and 
round the Horn. She had, in short, all those 
national resources without which even the genius of 
Napoleon was powerless to create a navy. 

With the marine of such an ally at his disposal, 
nothing remained but to concentrate the French 
and Spanish squadrons into one fleet, in order to 
enable him to attempt the invasion of England. 
It was not till after this concentration had been 
frustrated, and the combined French and Spanish 
fleets had been almost annihilated at Trafalgar, on 
the 2 1st of October following (1805), that England 
realized the greatness of the danger she had es- 



JOHN HOOKHAM FEE RE. 73 

capcd, or knew what she owed to the energy and 
seamanship, as well as to the heroic bravery and 
self-devotion of Nelson and Collingwood. 

Though not actively employed, Mr. Frere was by 
no means an unconcerned spectator of the great 
events which took place, and the important ques- 
tions which were discussed between his return from 
Spain in 1804, and his second mission thither in 
1808. 

When Lord Melville's (Dundas) administration 
of the navy was made the subject of Parliamentary 
inquiry in 1805, and of impeachment in the year 
following, he warmly espoused the cause of the Ex- 
Treasurer. Like many of Pitt's younger and more 
ardent followers, he had sometimes chafed at the 
obstacles which Dundas offered, when Pitt would 
willingly have given effect to his own enlightened 
views, on such questions as Slavery and Catholic 
Emancipation ; but Mr. Frere had not only a firm 
conviction of Dundas's perfect personal integrity, 
but a strong sense of the debt of gratitude which 
the nation owed him, as the most sagacious, and 
most consistent, if not the ablest of all Pitt's per- 
sonal friends ; and as the man, to whom more than 
any one in or out of Parliament, the navy was in- 
debted for its high state of fighting efficiency. 

He always believed that hostility to Pitt was the 
mainspring of the impeachment ; and he risked a 
breach, on behalf of his opinion, with some of his 
oldest and most valued friends, who objected to 
strike a balance between the value of Dundas's pub- 
lic services, and the irregularities of practice which 
had been permitted to pass uncorrected during his 
administration of the navy. 

Again, with regard to the measures for Catholic 
Emancipation, which were brought forward in the 
Session of 1805-6, he entirely concurred in the view 
taken by Pitt. Speaking in later life (1828-30), of 
Pitt's dealing with the question at this time, he said : — 



74 MEMOIR OF 

" It is not true that Pitt ever regarded Catholic 
Emancipation as a sop to be offered to the Irish to 
make them accept the Union. On the contrary, I 
know that Pitt regarded the emancipation of the 
Catholics as the more important measure of the 
two, and he would gladly have carried it at any 
time. But, when he first came into power, he saw 
the danger in bringing it forward, unless Ireland 
were previously united to England and Scotland. 
As he could not carry both measures together, 
which was his own original plan, he was glad to 
carry the Union, and always regarded it as paving 
the way for emancipation. 

" But Pitt was quite right to resist the Catholic 
question being brought forward in 1805, when there 
was no possible chance of its being settled. No 
one could have supported it at such a time but 
those who wished to embarrass Pitt, or who were 
pedantically determined to discuss it in or out of 
season. Pitt knew that if he took it up, it must 
alienate some of his best supporters, — that the mere 
discussion would, in all likelihood, quite overset the 
King, who was not by any means recovered from 
his attack of the year before ; and the country was 
to be thrown into all this confusion at the moment 
when we were engaged in a struggle for bare exist- 
ence, and when any relaxation of our efforts might 
lead to immediate invasion. The blame of the 
delay in redressing the Roman Catholic grievances 
rests not with Pitt, but with those who were in 
power when the war came to an end. 

" The state of the King's health was one of Pitt's 
great difficulties at this time, and contributed 
almost as much as the defection of old adherents, 
and the loss of Dundas, to break him down. I had 
seen a great change in the King when I had an 
audience on my return from Madrid ; he was very 
clear and sensible on all that related to public 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 75 

affairs, but morbidly inquisitive about other matters. 
* * * He was a most extraordinary 

man, both in his strong and weak points. After 
Pitt's death he was obliged to take in the Whigs, 
and he did it with a good grace. But he never got 
over his great personal dislike to them ; and the 
very first time they gave him an opportunity, he 
turned them out. This he did, in spite of all his 
mental and physical infirmities, entirely by himself, 
and without taking any one into his confidence. 

" All the time the Whigs were in, there were 
Tory courtiers about him who would have given 
the world to have spoken to him on politics, and 
who never, even in his rides, could get him to open 
his mouth. But the instant the Whigs made a 
false move, he saw it, and kicked them out." 

Mr. Frere looked on Pitt's labours at this period, 
the organization of the national defence against 
invasion, and the reconstruction of the European 
combination against Napoleon from the renewal of 
the war till his death in 1 806, as, under all the cir- 
cumstances, the most wonderful proofs of his fore- 
sight and ability, and as ranking among the most 
important services he rendered to his country and 
to Europe. " It was true," he said, " that, for the 
time, all Pitt's plans seemed frustrated by disasters 
like Austerlitz and Jena, by the selfish blindness 
and indecision of the Allies, and by the extra- 
ordinary ability of Napoleon. Still, the principles 
of the combination which was at length successful 
ten years later, were clearly laid down by Pitt in 
1805 '■> an d all that was good and beneficial to 
Europe in the settlement of 181 5, was marked out 
by him before he died. This he did, too, under the 
deepest discouragement. In failing health, and 
almost alone ; for, though the nation was with him, 
his difficulties in Parliament were greater than they 
had been since he first entered office ; and, with the 



76 MEMOIR OF 

exception of Canning, hardly one of his immediate 
followers fully entered into all his views." 

In June, 1807, when there appeared some brief 
hope that Prussia might be able to maintain an 
alliance with Russia and England in making head 
against France, Mr. Frere was appointed by the 
Portland Ministry Envoy and Minister Plenipo- 
tentiary to Berlin. But the Treaty of Tilsit in the 
following month closed the north of Europe against 
England, and prevented his setting out on that 
mission. 

He used frequently in later life to refer to this 
period as the gloomiest and most critical in our 
history since England became a first-class European 
power. Pitt was dead, and so was his great rival. 
No one had arisen with genius or authority com- 
parable to Pitt's, or capable of directing the energies 
of the nation in its great struggle for existence. 
Canning, whom, as Mr. Frere believed, Pitt had 
always regarded as his political heir, was still in a 
comparatively subordinate position, and suffered 
from the dread with which dull sensible men are 
apt to regard genius and wit. The short experi- 
ence of Whig administration had not shown that 
the ranks of Pitt's old opponents contained the man 
fitted to take his place in the confidence of the 
nation. 

Had it been possible to believe that Napoleon 
would rest content with the vast empire he had 
acquired, the people of England would, in 1807 
even more than at any other time, have rejoiced to 
see an end to the war which had so heavily taxed 
their resources. But his imperial ambition was con- 
tinually affording fresh proof of the hopelessness of 
any such termination of the struggle, and with the 
light which his own correspondence affords, it is 
now clear that no permanent peace, on terms honour- 
able to England, would ever have been tolerated 
by him. The whole continent, it is true, was at his 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 77 

feet. From the Atlantic to the Russian frontier 
not a cannon could be fired without his leave, and 
so completely had he fascinated the Emperor of 
Russia, that the partition of the Turkish empire 
between France and Russia seemed no improbable 
or remote result of their alliance. But Napoleon 
knew that the vast fabric of power which he had 
raised was not safe while England, his nearest 
neighbour, was really free and independent. His 
plans for invading and subjugating his insular rival, 
which had been delayed by the campaign of Aus- 
terlitz, and for the time frustrated by Trafalgar, had 
never been absent from his mind, and he resumed 
their active development directly Jena and Tilsit 
seemed to have placed Germany finally under his 
yoke. He believed that he possessed all the means 
required to reduce England to the level, at least, of 
Prussia and Austria, except such a navy as would 
make him, if but for a few days, master of the 
Channel. Spain alone, of all European nations, 
offered the means of rendering the fleets at his com- 
mand superior to those of England, and to Spain 
he turned with the determination to weld the forces 
of the Peninsula, and especially its marine, into one 
with those of the French empire. He had already 
under the treaty of St. Ildefonso, absolute control 
over all Spanish fleets and armies ; but he knew that 
under such a rule as that of Charles IV. the vast 
natural resources of Spain and her colonies would 
be ineffectually wasted, and that even the subser- 
viency of the " Prince of the Peace" was a poor sub- 
stitute for the vigour with which he could himself 
act on the administration through a king of his own 
making, or through his own military commanders. 
Thus his impatience to apply the power of Spain 
to further his great purpose of forming an irresistible 
navy, drove him into what he himself subsequently 
acknowledged as one of the capital errors of his 
career. Assured of the connivance of Russia, he 



78 MEMOIR OF 

was led step by step into the secret treaty and con- 
vention of Fontainbleau (May, 1806, and Oct. 1807) 
with Charles IV., by which Portugal was to be par- 
titioned for the benefit of France and Spain — into 
the seizure of the Spanish frontier fortresses, and 
into all the treacheries which followed the meeting 
of the Spanish royal family with Napoleon at 
Bayonne, the forced abdications of the king and 
his son Ferdinand — the Bayonne constitution, the 
bestowal of the Spanish Crown on Joseph Buona- 
parte, and the French invasion of the peninsula in 
support of the usurpation. 

In May and June, 1808, all Europe was startled 
by the explosion which Mr. Frere had foreseen as 
imminent in Spain two years before, and which he 
had then foretold to Lord Malmesbury. 1 It naturally, 
under the circumstances, took the form of an insur- 
rection against the foreign invader, and in favour of 
Ferdinand, who was regarded by the clergy, the 
common people, and the great bulk of the nobility, 
as their legitimate Sovereign. In every part of the 
peninsula, in the remotest villages, and in the almost 
inaccessible sierras of the distant provinces, as well 
as in the great cities, the insurrection broke out with 
a violence, an unanimity, and a suddenness to which 
neither before nor since has modern Europe seen 
any parallel. The French garrisons speedily found 
that they commanded no more than their guns 
covered. The people everywhere assembled, seized 
such arms as they could lay hands on, appointed 
leaders, organized Juntas as a form of local govern- 
ment, and issued proclamations detailing the wrongs 
and insults the nation had suffered, and calling on 
all true Spaniards to join in expelling the invader 
from their soil. In some cases terrible massacres 
of the French or their supposed partizans disgraced 

1 " Malmesbury Diaries," vol. iv. p. 330, as quoted, anted, 
p. 68. 



JOHN HOOKHAM FEE RE. 79 

the popular cause ; but, in general, the people be- 
haved with wonderful self-command, and with a 
dignity which added greatly to the moral effect 
produced by the insurrection on the rest of Europe. 
The leading Juntas took prompt and effectual steps 
to appeal for sympathy and aid to all foreign 
nations, and especially to England, the only power 
which had never either succumbed to the force or 
yielded to the seductions of the Arbiter of Conti- 
nental Europe. 

Spain was peculiarly fitted for the part she thus 
took in an insurrection against the imperial des- 
potism of France. The people were, as Napoleon's 
sagacity had before pointed out, " unexhausted by 
revolutionary passion." Peculiarities of race com- 
bined with the physical features of the country, 
and with the history and traditions of the many 
nations which make up its population, to render the 
Spaniards a people dwelling apart not only from 
the rest of Europe, but divided very distinctly 
among themselves into separate communities inde- 
pendent of each other ; so that the subjugation or 
destruction of one province would have little effect 
in ensuring the submission of its neighbours. The 
consequent division of interests, feelings, and action, 
which so often led to subsequent disaster, at first 
greatly promoted the spread of the insurrection. 
On a few vital points — their national pride, their 
devotion to their national religion, their obedience 
to its ministers, and their indignation at the treat- 
ment the nation and the royal family had received 
at the hands of Napoleon — the mass of the popula- 
tion felt as one man, and all determined to resist 
the invader. But each city and province took its 
own measures for organizing resistance ; and, till 
bitter experience taught them some of the evils of 
disunion, each acted as if it had been a separate and 
perfectly independent power. 

By the end of May, or early in June (1808), the 



8o MEMOIR OF 

Juntas had been organized in most of the provinces; 
that of Seville had secured the co-operation of the 
Spanish divisions under Castafios in the south of 
the peninsula, and through him had opened friendly 
relations with Sir Hew Dalrymple, the English 
commander at Gibraltar ; had formally declared 
war against France, and had issued a manifesto 
which was accepted by England and other powers 
of Europe as the national declaration of Spain 
against Napoleon. By the middle of June the 
French squadron in Cadiz was captured, and the 
garrisons of Ferrol and Corunna had already de- 
clared for the national cause. Before the end of 
July, Dupont, with 20,000 excellent French troops 
had been confronted in his march on Cadiz, and 
forced to lay down his arms to Castafios at Baylen — 
the first great and decided reverse which had be- 
fallen the French armies in a fair field since the 
revolutionary wars began. Joseph Buonaparte 
upon this hastily quitted Madrid, and the capital 
was once more left in the sole possession of Spanish 
troops. 

Napoleon had clearly foreseen the danger. Writing 
from Bayonne to Murat at Madrid, in March, 
1808, before he had entirely thrown off the mask, 
he said : — " Never suppose that you are engaged 
with a disarmed nation, and that you have only to 
show yourself to insure the submission of Spain. 
*- * * They have still energy. You have to 
deal with a virgin people. They already have all 
the courage, and they will soon have all the 
enthusiasm which you meet with among men who 
are not worn out by political passions. 

" The aristocracy and the clergy are the masters 
of Spain. If they become seriously alarmed for 
their privileges and existence, they will rouse the 
people, and induce an eternal war. At present I 
have many partizans among them. If I show 
myself as a conqueror, I shall soon cease to have 
any." * * * 



JOHN HOOKHAM FEE RE. 81 

After pointing out how effectually England might 
act on the coast, and discussing all possible plans 
for governing the country under French dictation, 
he winds up with the emphatic declaration, — " If 
war break out, all is lost." 

In exile at St. Helena, he very truly said : — " It 
was that unhappy war in Spain which ruined 
me. It was a real wound, the first cause of the 
misfortunes of France." When the insurrection 
did break out, he never underrated its importance, 
but determined to crush it at once. In his earliest 
instructions he had charged his generals, "above all, 
take care to avoid any misfortune in Spain ; its 
consequences would be incalculable." Dupont's 
surrender, and Joseph's consequent retreat from the 
capital, were two misfortunes regarding the gravity 
of which there could be no mistake. The Emperor 
well knew that the Assembly of Notables at Bay- 
onne were no true representatives of the Spanish 
nation, and that their assent to his usurpation was 
of little practical value. But he had confidence in 
his own power to carry out a thoroughly effective 
military occupation of the peninsula. He ordered 
his best troops and most trusted marshals to march 
for Spain. The better to organize operations, he 
returned to Paris in August. In September he met 
the Emperor of Russia at Erfurth ; made a favour 
to Prussia of withdrawing from the military occupa- 
tion, which had lasted since Jena, the veteran troops 
he needed in Spain ; did his best to overawe 
Austria, already showing signs of impatience under 
his yoke ; and, having confirmed his influence over 
Alexander, attempted, with the help of Russia, to 
negotiate with England, and to neutralize her 
hostility that he might deal with Spain single- 
handed. But England had already determined to 
make common cause with the Spaniards. The 
deputies from the Asturian Junta had arrived in 
London early in June, and each successive post 

G 



82 MEMOIR OF 

brought news of the spread of the insurrection. 
The general enthusiasm of the Spaniards left no 
room for doubting that it was a really national and 
popular movement, essentially different in its origin, 
character, and extent, from anything which had 
previously occurred on the Continent to check the 
uninterrupted success of Napoleon's career. Sheri- 
dan vied with Canning in eulogizing the conduct 
of the Spanish patriots, and the Opposition cor- 
dially supported the Ministry when they declared 
their intention of sending British troops to aid the 
Spaniards in asserting their independence. 

There are few portions of modern history with 
which Englishmen are better acquainted than with 
the details of the contest on which England thus 
entered. The story has been told in the stately 
periods of South ey, and by the burning eloquence 
of Napier. In the two wonderful series of volumes 
more lately published, containing the correspond- 
ence of the great soldiers who directed the armies 
of England and France, Wellington and Napoleon 
have themselves recorded for posterity the minutest 
details of their own plans, and much criticism of 
their opponents. In this short biographical sketch 
it is only necessary that I should very briefly allude 
to those events of this well-known history with 
which Mr. Frere was officially connected. 

His previous services in Spain, his warm sym- 
pathy with all the nobler traits of Spanish character, 
his intimate acquaintance with the Spanish lan- 
guage and manners, and, above all, the esteem and 
respect in which he was held by all the best among 
the leaders in the Spanish national cause, to many 
of whom he was personally known, pointed him 
out as eminently fitted to represent England in 
Spain at a juncture of such importance, and on the 
4th of October, 1808, he was accredited as British 
Minister Plenipotentiary to Ferdinand VII., then 
represented by the Central Junta, at whose place of 



JOHN HOOKHAM FEE RE. 83 

assembly Mr. Frere had instructions to take up his 
residence. 

He had already been partly instrumental in re- 
storing to the armies of Spain a very important 
reinforcement. The story of the mode in which a 
Spanish division under the Marquis de Romana 
was released from Denmark and transferred to 
Spain has been repeatedly told ; but Mr. Frere's 
connexion with the enterprise will justify a recapi- 
tulation of some of its romantic details. It had 
been a part of Napoleon's policy in Spain, as in 
most other countries which he occupied, to weaken 
the national power of resistance to his encroach- 
ments, by transferring the flower of the regular 
army to distant foreign service ; and one of the first 
uses he made of the control he acquired over the 
Spanish armies in 1807 was to march Romana's 
division of about 14,000 men to Hamburg and 
thence into Denmark, where it was destined to join 
the Franco-Danish army which Marshal Bernadotte 
was collecting for the invasion of Sweden. Here 
they were closely watched and cut off from all 
intercourse with Spain. In March, 1808, the 
Spanish division had commenced crossing the Belts, 
when their movement was interrupted by the ap- 
pearance of British cruisers, which captured a Da- 
nish ship of the line, and for more than three months 
prevented the transit of the invading force to the 
shores of Sweden. The oath of allegiance to 
Joseph Buonaparte and to the Napoleonic consti- 
tution in Spain had previously been tendered to 
the Spanish troops ; but their suspicions were 
aroused by the circumstance that no private or 
other letters accompanied the public despatch for- 
warding the oath of allegiance, and that no intelli- 
gence was allowed to reach Spaniards in Denmark 
except through the French press, or through chan- 
nels controlled by the French Government. Some 
of them, however, took the oath without much 



84 MEMOIR OF 

demur. Others, including the troops nearest Ro- 
mana's head quarters, took it conditionally, with a 
proviso that their oath should be null unless the 
Revolution were confirmed by the general consent 
of the Spanish nation ; and two regiments- abso- 
lutely refused the oath, rose on their French com- 
mandant, and planting their colours knelt round 
them and swore to be faithful to their country. 

When the insurrection against the intrusive 
government in Spain spread to the army under 
Castafios, it was one of his first requests to Sir 
Hew Dalrymple, at Gibraltar, that the Spanish 
troops in the Baltic might be apprised of the turn 
affairs had taken in their native country, and that 
the English would open communication with Ro- 
mana. But watched as the Spaniards were by the 
French, and in Denmark, with which we were then 
at war, this was a matter of the utmost difficulty 
and danger. The task was undertaken by a priest 
named Robertson, an accomplished linguist ; and, 
as it was impossible to risk the danger attaching to 
written credentials, he was instructed to use, as his 
passport to Romana's confidence, a verse from the 
Gests of the Cid. Mr. Frere, when at Madrid some 
years before, had suggested to Romana a conjec- 
tural emendation in a verse, 1 the mention of which, 
as it could only be known to the two friends, would 
satisfy Romana that Robertson had communicated 
with Mr. Frere, and that his intelligence might be 
relied on. 

Robertson started for Heligoland with Mr. Mac- 
kenzie, who was charged to aid him in landing on 
the continent. Throughout the war the little island 
was used as a rendezvous for our cruisers and an 
entrepot for the British commerce, which was ex- 

1 " Aun vea el hora que vos merezca dos tanto," v. 2348, 

where Mr. Frere proposed to read merezcades, an emendation 
of which Romana at once perceived the propriety. 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 85 

eluded by the decrees of Napoleon from direct 
admission to any continental port. On their ar- 
rival, the Governor placed an embargo on all the 
shipping there, and Robertson started in a boat to 
the nearest shore ; but it was found impossible for 
any one unprovided with a passport to elude the 
vigilance of the French and Danish officials, and 
after three days he returned without effecting a 
landing. Mackenzie, however, found the master of 
a captured Bremen vessel, who promised, if his 
vessel were released, to land Robertson in safety 
and provide him with a passport. The Bremener 
had a near relation among the city officials, with 
whose help he fulfilled his engagement. Robert- 
son, in the character of a German schoolmaster, 
made his way to Romana's presence ; and having 
accredited himself by his verse from the Cid, de- 
tailed to him in Latin the course which events had 
taken in the Peninsula. Romana at once resolved 
to effect his escape from Denmark, with his whole 
force, provided he could obtain the assistance of 
the British naval and military commanders, who 
were then in the Baltic supporting the Swedes in 
their resistance to the threatened French invasion. 
Robertson returned to Heligoland with this assur- 
ance, and with a request that Mackenzie would 
communicate with Sir John Moore, who then com- 
manded the British Auxiliaries in Sweden, and 
procure his aid in covering the retreat and embarca- 
tion of the Spaniards. The requisite orders were 
issued by the British Government, and within a 
week Mackenzie received letters for Sir John 
Moore, which he determined to carry himself to 
Gottenburg. But when he arrived on the Swedish 
coast, the British troops had already sailed for 
England. Returning to Heligoland, the packet in 
which he sailed was driven by a gale on to the 
Danish coast. There he fell in with a Danish pri- 
vateer of greatly superior force, and after a running 



86 MEMOIR OF 

fight of four hours, escaped with difficulty back to 
Gottenburg. He then determined to communi- 
cate with Sir James Saumerez, the British Admiral 
in the Baltic. This he at length accomplished. 
Sir James at once determined to effect the release 
of the Spaniards. Under his orders Sir Richard 
Keats had commenced the necessary arrangements, 
when Sir James received despatches from his own 
government suggesting the course he had already 
adopted ; and a Spanish courier brought from Lon- 
don letters from the Junta of Gallicia and others in 
Spain, for Romana and his second in command. 

To convey these to the Spanish camp, and when 
all was arranged with the leaders to keep the con- 
templated movements secret ; to concentrate and 
embark the scattered Spanish troops from an 
enemy's country and in the presence of the hostile 
forces of France and Denmark, was still an opera- 
tion of the greatest difficulty. The Spanish regi- 
ments were quartered, widely apart, in various 
towns on the mainland of Jutland, and in several 
islands in the Baltic. A young Spanish officer 
crossing from one island to the other was taken 
prisoner by the British squadron, enlisted in the 
cause, and sent on with letters for Romana. But 
the fact that he had communicated with the British 
squadron was discovered by the French Command- 
ant, whose suspicions had been already aroused, 
and Romana resolved to prevent interruption from 
the Danes by seizing Nyborg. This was effected 
with Admiral Keats' help, after a determined re- 
sistance on the part of some of the Danish officers, 
who, faithful to their French allies, refused to aid 
the Spaniards. The captured gunboats and coast- 
ing craft afforded the means of collecting and em- 
barking such of the Spanish regiments as could 
reach the coast near Admiral Keats' squadron. 
One regiment marched eighty miles in twenty-one 
hours, and all made incredible exertions to rejoin 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 87 

their countrymen. Many hair-breadth escapes and 
romantic incidents occurred while the Spaniards 
and their English naval allies were engaged in this 
perilous service. At length nine thousand men, 
besides followers, were landed on the Swedish 
shore, and there first learnt the details of the won- 
derful success which had attended the early efforts 
of their countrymen to eject the French invaders. 
By the end of August transports arrived from Eng- 
land to embark them, and they sailed for Spain. 
Romana, on his way to Corunna, visited England 
to confer with the Ministry, and learn their views 
regarding the future conduct of the war, and did 
not reach Spain till later in the year. 

The British Government meanwhile had not been 
idle. They had from the first resolved to support 
the insurrection vigorously. Mr. Canning and Lord 
Castlereagh at this time held the seals of the Fo- 
reign and the War Departments in the Duke of 
Portland's Ministry. When the news of the Spa- 
nish insurrection first arrived in England, an expedi- 
tion of about 10,000 men, organized by the preced- 
ing administration, was about to sail from Cork for 
South America. It was determined to divert to 
Portugal this force under command of Sir Arthur 
Wellesley ; and Sir John Moore, who had been 
sent to Sweden to assist in repelling the French 
and Russian invasion, and whose aid had been de- 
clined by the King of Sweden, was recalled and 
directed to sail for the Peninsula. Sir Arthur 
Wellesley's expedition left Cork on the 12th July, 
1808. The General himself reached Corunna on 
the 20th, and learning there that the Junta of Gal- 
licia did not wish for the aid of his troops, he sup- 
plied them with arms and money and proceeded to 
Portugal, the liberation of which was the first object 
of his instructions. Off Mondego Bay he learnt 
that he was to be superseded as soon as Sir Harry 
Burrard should arrive, and that Burrard again was 



SS MEMOIR OF 

to give place to Sir Hew Dalrymple as soon as he 
could come round from Gibraltar. But hearing at 
the same time of the surrender of Dupon's army to 
Castanos, and seeing the opportunity, if no time 
were lost, for striking an effective blow against the 
French under Junot at Lisbon, Wellesley landed on 
the 1st of August with less than 10,000 men to face 
the 25,000 French soldiers, who then garrisoned 
Portugal. Being opportunely reinforced by General 
Spencer, who had anticipated his orders to join him 
from the south of Spain, Wellesley, undeterred by 
the delays of the Portuguese, pushed on to attack 
Junot. On the 1 5 th of August the first British blood 
was shed in a skirmish with the French advanced 
guard. At Rolica, on the 17th, Sir Arthur gained 
his first victory in the Peninsula, and captured three 
guns. Junot advanced from Lisbon with all his 
disposable force to meet him, and Wellesley, who 
had been reinforced by further arrivals from Eng- 
land, ordered a movement to cut off Junot from the 
capital. But the reinforcements brought also a 
senior officer, Sir Harry Burrard, who, before he 
landed, forbade the move as attended with too 
much risk. Meantime Junot had attacked Welles- 
ley at Vimiero on the 21st August, and was beaten, 
with the loss of thirteen guns and 400 prisoners. 
The victory would have been still more complete 
had Wellesley been allowed to follow it up. He 
was, however, superseded on the field by Sir Harry 
Burrard, who ordered a halt ; and Junot, by a forced 
march, regained the capital unmolested. On the 
22nd August, Burrard was himself superseded by 
Dalrymple. The next day further operations were 
suspended by a French flag of truce. The Conven- 
tion of Cintra ensued, and the French army evacu- 
ated Portugal, including the strong frontier for- 
tresses of Elvas and Almeida. By the middle of 
October not a French soldier remained, and the 
Russian fleet in the Tasois had been surrendered to 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 89 

English custody. These were great results. They 
might, however, no doubt have been greater, had 
Wellesley been left in undisturbed command, to 
carry out his own plans either before or after the 
battle of Vimiero. The English nation was pro- 
foundly dissatisfied, and directed its anger not 
against the Minister who sent three Generals to 
supersede one another on the same field, but against 
the Generals who signed the Convention. They 
were all summoned to England to defend their 
conduct before a Court of Enquiry, and Wellesley 
was thus prevented from having any chance of test- 
ing his opinion that, within a month after the Con- 
vention, he could have been at Madrid with 20,000 
men. 1 In judging of these operations, as well as of 
all others that followed them in the Peninsula, it 
should be borne in mind that Wellesley's difficul- 
ties from deficiency of information, of carriage, of 
roads, of regular supplies, and of cavalry — from un- 
certain, over-confident, or half-hearted friends, and 
from concealed enemies, and above all from nume- 
rical inferiority of trained soldiers, were the same in 
kind, and hardly less in degree, than those which he 
and Moore and every other English general in 
Spain experienced up to the end of the war. We 
may thus appreciate the qualities which enabled 
him from the first to understand the real conditions 
on which alone he could hope to war successfully in 
such a country, and the cautious boldness with 
which he pressed on, till he finally expelled the 
French from Spain. 

Dalrymple, Burrard, and Wellesley, having left 
or been superseded, Sir John Moore, who had ar- 
rived in Portugal some time before, was appointed a 
to command a force of 30,000 infantry and 5,000 



1 Gurwood's "Wellington Dispatches," vol. iv. p. 121. 

2 Vide Letter from Lord Castlereagh to Sir J. Moore, dated 
25th Sept. 1808. 



go MEMOIR OF 

cavalry, to be employed in the north of Spain, to 
co-operate with the Spaniards in the expulsion of 
the French; and of this force about 15,000 men, 
expected from England, under Sir David Baird, 
were to land at Corunna and to join him. Moore's 
instructions directed that his army was not to be 
partially committed against the enemy. He was 
to consider the points in Gallicia or on the borders 
of Leon, where it could be most advantageously 
equipped and concentrated, and the routes by which 
it was to be assembled were left to his discretion. 
He was to open communications with the Spanish 
authorities, and to frame a plan of the campaign. 

On receipt of these instructions, Moore divided 
his forces to facilitate their movements, going 
himself direct to Salamanca, which he reached on 
the 13th November, and sending the reserves and 
most of the artillery by a more circuitous route. 
Baird had landed at Corunna on the 13th October, 
but was still four marches from Salamanca on the 
20th November. 

A Central Junta for Spain had been installed at 
Aranjuez about the end of September. The prac- 
tical incapacity of most of its members, their irre- 
concileable jealousies and divisions, and other inhe- 
rent faults of its constitution, rendered it from the 
first, incapable of anything like efficient administra- 
tion. Spain, in fact, up to the end of the Peninsular 
War, had barely the semblance of an effective cen- 
tral government. 

This was, however, the body to which Mr. Frere 
was accredited as British Envoy and Plenipotentiary. 
He arrived at Corunna on the 20th October, accom- 
panied by Romana, whose troops, released from 
Denmark, had already been disembarked. 

Mr. Crabb Robinson, who had gone out to Corunna 
as Correspondent to the " Times," after an account 
of the landing of Baird's troops on the 13th October, 
1808, and their march to the interior on the ex- 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 91 

pedition which he " understood was ill-planned," 
says : l — 

"On the 20th there was an arrival which, more 
than that of the English, ought to have gratified 
the Spaniards. I witnessed a procession from the 
coast to the Town Hall, of which the two leading 
figures were the Spanish General Romana and the 
English Minister Mr. Frere. Few incidents in the 
great war against Napoleon can be referred to as 
rivalling in romantic interest the escape of the 
Spanish soldiers under General Romana from the 
North of Germany." 

He was disappointed in Romana's appearance, 
but adds : — 

" I received a favourable impression from the per- 
son and address of Mr. Frere ; and when, in a few 
months, the public voice in England was raised 
against him as the injudicious counsellor who im- 
perilled the British army by advising their advance 
on Madrid my own feeling was that he was unjustly 
treated." 

Napoleon's meeting with the Emperor Alexander 
at Erfurth, already referred to, had arranged what 
was in effect a virtual division of the supremacy of 
Europe. Russia was to get undisturbed possession 
of Finland, Moldavia, and Wallachia, with great 
prospects in Poland and Asia, so as to threaten the 
British Indian Empire. Napoleon obtained Russia's 
recognition of his conquests in Italy, the Peninsula, 
and Germany. The severity of his grasp on Prussia 
was to be relaxed in the interests of Russia. 

Alexander, on the other hand, was to aid France, 
should Austria prove troublesome. Regarding 
Turkey only they failed to agree. Neither Em- 
peror could consent to see the other master of Con- 
stantinople. 

Thus secured for a time against diversions on his 



1 " Crabb Robinson's Diary," vol. i. p. 275. 



92 MEMOIR OF 

other frontier, Napoleon returned to Bayonne, No- 
vember 3rd, determined to devote his whole power 
to crush Spain and Portugal, and to drive the Eng- 
lish out of the Peninsula. 

He had already drawn to the frontier, from 
France, Germany, and Italy, 300,000 men, the 
flower of his veteran army. About 180,000, con- 
centrated under his own eye, were ready for opera- 
tions west of the Ebro. 

To these the Spaniards could oppose less than 
75,000, most of them untrained recruits, widely 
divided, ill-organized, imperfectly armed, under 
inexperienced and almost independent comman- 
ders. 

Their British allies, coming up to their aid, were 
marching on Salamanca by several lines wide apart, 
and all far in the rear of the Spanish armies. 

Early in November, Napoleon let loose " the hur- 
ricane of war" which he had so carefully designed. 
In the course of that month, his Marshals had met 
and utterly defeated the Spaniards in three decisive 
battles, driven their divided armies still further 
asunder, carried the formidable Somosierra pass, 
and by the 4th of December the Emperor was in 
possession of Madrid. 

Thus, before the end of November, it had become 
clear that the English were too late and too few to 
support the Spaniards in holding the line of the 
Ebro against Napoleon's overwhelming advance. 
Moore saw the possibility and great political ad- 
vantages of an advance on Madrid to support the 
Spaniards in their defence of their capital. But 
this movement was one of great risk. His own 
judgment inclined to a retreat and re-embarcation 
in Portugal, and a renewal of operations in support 
of the Spanish armies in Southern Spain. 

Under these circumstances he, on the 27th No- 
vember, asked the British Envoy's opinion as to 
which of these two courses he thought best, with 



JOHN HOOK II AM FRERE. 93 

reference to the Spanish nation's power of resist- 
ance, and to the probable wishes of the English 
Cabinet and people, could they know all the cir- 
cumstances. 

Mr. Frere replied on the 30th November, recom- 
mending a retreat on Gallicia, or on the strong 
country about Astorga, as preferable to a retreat on 
Portugal, if retreat were inevitable. With regard 
to the temper of the Spanish people, he urged that 
the spirit of resistance was much stronger in almost 
every other province than in the open plains of 
Leon and in Castile. 

Recognizing the greater hazard of the forward 
move, he spoke decidedly of the good spirit of the 
Spanish people, and hopefully of the Government, 
adding, " I cannot but think, therefore, that consi- 
derations both of policy and generosity call upon 
us for an immediate effort. 

" If, however, this view of the subject should not 
appear to you sufficiently clear or conclusive to 
induce you to take a step which would, I am well 
convinced (since you do me the honour to refer to 
me on the subject), meet with the approbation of 
His Majesty's Government, I would venture to re- 
commend retaining the position of Astorga. A 
retreat from that place to Corunna would (as far as 
an unmilitary man may be allowed to judge of a 
country which he has travelled over) be less difficult 
than through Portugal to Lisbon ; and we ought, 
in that position, to wait for the reinforcements of 
cavalry from England, which would enable the 
army to act in the flat country which opens imme- 
diately from that point, and extends through the 
whole of Leon and Old Castile. My political rea- 
sons on this head I have already troubled you with. 

" I mention this, however, merely as in my 
humble opinion the least objectionable of the two 
modes of retreat. Our first object, as it appears to 
me, ought to be to collect a force capable of repuls- 



94 MEMOIR OF 

ing the French before they receive their reinforce- 
ments. 

" The covering and protecting Madrid is surely a 
point of great moment for effect in Spain, and still 
more in France, and in the West of Europe. It 
would be a point of the utmost importance for 
Buonaparte to be able to publish a decree, or to 
date a letter from Madrid. 

" The people of that town are full of resolution, 
and determined to defend it, in spite of its situation, 
which is judged to be an unfavourable one. This 
determination ought surely to be encouraged by 
some show of support. 

"The siege of Madrid by a Pretender to the 
throne would be a circumstance decisive against the 
claim, even if in other respects it were a legitimate 
one." 

On the 3rd of December, Mr. Frere wrote again 
from Talavera, detailing the reports he had received 
of the spirit of resistance evinced by the populace 
at Madrid, and strongly urging the necessity of 
supporting the determination of the Spanish people 
by all the means in his power. 

This letter reached Sir John Moore on the 5th. 
Baird, on the 29th of November had, in obedience 
to Moore's orders, commenced a retrograde move- 
ment to Villa Franca. Moore now ordered him to 
stand fast, and to prepare to return to Astorga. 

The next day he repeated his orders to return to 
Astorga, adding, " What is passing at Madrid may 
be decisive of the fate of Spain, and we must be at 
hand to aid, and to take advantage of whatever 
happens. The wishes of our country and our duty 
demand this of us, with whatever risk it may be 
attended. I mean to proceed bridle in hand, for if 
the bubble burst and Madrid fall, we shall have a 
run for it ;" and in view to such a contingency, he 
desired Baird to continue his preparations for retreat 
on Corunna. 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 95 

On the 9th of December, he received certain in- 
formation that the French had possession of the 
suburbs of Madrid, but hopes were still held out 
that the city would resist. 

On the 13th, Moore advanced towards Valladolid 
to join Baird. But learning on the 14th that 
Madrid had already fallen, he determined to strike a 
blow against Soult, who in the valley of the Carrion 
covered the right flank of Napoleon's communica- 
tions, and then to retreat on Gallicia. On the 
20th, he effected a junction with Baird's force at 
Mayorga, and the next day the British cavalry 
under Lord Paget surprised the French cavalry, 
who believed the British to be far off, and in full 
retreat to their ships. Two colonels and 160 men 
were made prisoners ; and the French, though 
greatly superior in force, were utterly routed. 

This advance completely paralyzed the south- 
ward movements of the French armies. Every 
other important operation was immediately sus- 
pended, and 50,000 men, the flower of the French 
troops, were ordered, under the Emperor in person, 
to check the progress of the British. Urging his 
men, by his own example, in the teeth of a violent 
wintry hurricane over the Guadarrama Pass, Napo- 
leon, on the 26th of December, established his head 
quarters at Tordesillas. 

Ney meantime was moving from Zamora north- 
wards to cut off Moore's retreat first on Portugal 
and then on Gallicia ; but Moore had suspended his 
advance on the 23rd of December, and retiring, 
reached Benevente before the enemy. There he 
halted for rest, behind the Esla, swollen and im- 
passable from wintry rains. On the first of January 
(1809), the Emperor had united at Astorga 70,000 
men and 100 pieces of cannon under Soult and 
Ney. In ten days he had brought 50,000 men 200 
miles from Madrid, over mountain ranges and rivers 
almost impassable, in the depth of winter; but 



95 MEMOIR OF 

before arriving at Astorga he was arrested by the 
news of Austria having joined the confederacy 
against him ; and believing that he had now virtu- 
ally performed his threat of driving the English 
into the sea, he left Soult and Ney with 60,000 men 
to continue the pursuit, and returned with his 
guards, to meet what he deemed the more pressing 
dangers threatening him in Germany. 

The English continued their retreat, hard pressed 
by their active and numerous enemies, and suffering 
almost as much from relaxed discipline as from the 
terrible severity of the march through inhospitable 
mountains in the depth of a severe winter. But 
whenever battle was offered, the old spirit revived. 
Corunna was reached on the nth of January. On 
the 1 6th, Soult with 20,000 French, and strong in 
artillery, attacked the British force, reduced to 
14,000, weak in artillery, and not advantageously 
posted. The attack was repulsed with great loss to 
the enemy, and the British remained masters of the 
field. But Sir John Moore was mortally wounded 
in the moment of victory ; Baird also was severely 
hurt, and the command devolved on General Hope, 
under whom the troops were embarked without 
further molestation, and sailed for England. Co- 
runna and Ferrol, with seven sail of the line and 
great naval stores, surrendered to the French a few 
days afterwards. 

Such, in brief, were the events of the first Penin- 
sular campaign. The army under Sir John Moore 
was the strongest and most complete which Eng- 
land had ever been able to land on the Continent 
since the Revolutionary wars began. The public in 
England, with a very inadequate notion of the task 
before it, had formed the most extravagant expec- 
tations of what that army was to do ; and their dis- 
appointment and anger knew no bounds when the 
remnant returned home, — so toil-worn and disor- 
ganized by exposure and privation, that almost 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 97 

every corps required complete renewal before it was 
fit for further active service. 

A victim was required to appease popular dis- 
content. The General who commanded had died 
a hero's death on the field of victory, and of those 
who took part in the events connected with the 
campaign, the next most prominent actor was the 
British Minister whose opinions throughout these 
operations had been frequently opposed to those of 
the General. It was not to be expected that the 
Government or their supporters would admit that 
the blame of failure was fairly attributable to any 
fault in their plans or administration. Contempo- 
rary hostile criticism of the General, or his proceed- 
ings, was virtually precluded by his death. So upon 
the Envoy was cast, by the public and the press, a 
share of blame which, under the circumstances, 
could hardly fail to be far in excess of what was 
deserved. 

When Parliament met, a motion was brought 
forward by Mr. Ponsonby in the House of Com- 
mons (February 24, 1809) "that it is indispensably 
necessary that this House should inquire into the 
causes, conduct, and events of the late campaign in 
Spain." The debate was long remembered as 
having been interrupted by the news that Drury 
Lane Theatre was on fire, and by a discussion 
whether the House should proceed with business 
when so much property, in which members and 
their constituents were interested, was in jeopardy. 
The motion for inquiry was resisted by the Minis- 
ters, and after much debate finally rejected on a 
division by a majority of 93 in a House of 347. The 
Government, however, so far yielded to the popular 
feeling of the day, that they determined to recall Mr. 
Frere. The appearance of censure was technically 
avoided by selecting as his successor the Marquis 
Wellesley, fresh from the glories of his Indian 
administration, and by appointing him (on the 29th 

H 



98 MEMOIR OF 

April, 1 809,) Ambassador to the Court of the King 
of Spain, a grade higher than that of Envoy, which 
was the rank Mr. Frere held. But the supersession 
was regarded as an unmistakeable censure, which Mr. 
Frere felt he had not deserved. He thenceforward 
renounced public life, and when it was proposed to 
send him as Ambassador to St. Petersburg, and, 
twice in after years, to raise him to the Peerage, he 
declined both offers. It was natural he should feel 
that what he had deserved from the Government, 
if they approved his conduct, was support and 
approbation when he was unjustly attacked ; and 
that no subsequent honours or promotion could 
compensate for his having been left a mark for 
public obloquy, when he had under most trying 
circumstances performed an important service to 
his country. 

It would perhaps have been hardly reasonable to 
expect from their cotemporaries a perfectly im- 
partial apportionment of praise or blame to the 
chief actors in these events. It is possible, how- 
ever, for this generation with a much fuller know- 
ledge of facts than was then accessible to the English 
public, and after the lapse of sixty years has miti- 
gated personal and party animosities, to form a 
more dispassionate judgment. It is now clear from 
Napoleon's correspondence that, in his opinion, the 
results of the campaign were far more important to 
the final issue of the great continental struggle, than 
most of Moore's countrymen at the time believed ; 
and, what is more, that this opinion of the Emperor's 
was so well founded, that those results would have 
justified almost any sacrifice which the British 
forces employed could have made. With the more 
complete evidence now available, we are better able 
to judge whether the Envoy or the General was 
right where they differed, and to decide how far 
the Envoy was answerable for the results of the 
campaign not having been yet more considerable, 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 99 

or for the cost of attaining those results having been 
so great. 

What was the object aimed at in sending a British 
army to Spain ? 

It was not merely to secure the independence of 
Spain or Portugal. The expulsion of the French 
from the Peninsula would have been but one step 
towards attaining that security for the independence 
of every separate state in Europe, which had for 
years been the avowed purpose of all our efforts 
against Napoleon. This was well understood in 
Austria and Prussia. Germany watched the Penin- 
sular contest with the conviction that her immediate 
prospects of freedom from the foreign thraldom 
under which she had so long groaned, depended on 
the results of the Spanish insurrection. The gigantic 
preparations made by Napoleon to crush all oppo- 
sition in the Peninsula, sensibly diminished his 
powers of repression in Germany ; and whatever 
prolonged the necessity for engaging the attention 
of the Emperor himself and of the flower of his 
armies in Spain, became nearly as important to the 
general cause of freedom in Europe, as any repe- 
tition of such a demoralizing defeat as Baylen could 
have been. 

In no part of the wide area of the European con- 
test could the power of England be used to so 
great advantage as in Spain. It was a true instinct 
which directed thither the scattered expeditions 
previously detached in various directions towards 
America, Sweden, and to different points in Europe. 
But the English Government and people were still 
tiros in such a struggle as that in the Peninsula. 
They had made a greater effort than in any of our 
previous continental enterprises to equip the army 
entrusted to Sir John Moore ; but it was wholly 
inadequate to cope single-handed with the vast 
hosts of France, concentrated under the Emperor 
in person. 

LOFC. 



ioo MEMOIR OF 

What, then, might reasonably have been expected 
of Moore and his army ? 

His instructions indicated concentration in the 
north of Spain, at some point in Gallicia or on the 
borders of Leon : after which he was to act on such 
a plan of campaign as he might concert with the 
Spanish authorities, and he had the most ample 
discretion left him to make the best use he could of 
the forces placed at his disposal. 

Subsequent events proved that it would have 
been difficult to give any better instructions to the 
British General than to leave him thus free to devise 
his own plan of operations for aiding the Spaniards 
to expel the French. 

Moore's campaign, as far as it was in accordance 
with these instructions, was a decided success. It 
saved Portugal and the south of Spain from being- 
overrun. It inflicted great loss on the French 
armies, by forcing them to act on a vast scale in 
the most unfavourable season, and in a country 
where their movements cost the heaviest sacrifices 
of men and resources. Above all, it occupied 
Napoleon's personal attention till the critical mo- 
ment arrived when the action of Austria obliged 
him to turn to Germany, and to leave to other 
hands the task of crushing the Spanish nation ; an 
undertaking in which nothing short of his own 
genius had a chance of success. The campaign has 
been criticised on various grounds, some military, 
some political, and some of a mixed character ; 
partly military and partly political. Into the 
purely military questions it would be out of place 
here to enter. Whether Moore should have moved 
from Portugal by one line, or, as he did, by several; 
— whether he might not have concentrated, and 
moved from Salamanca more rapidly, or done more, 
by previous preparation, to facilitate his own re- 
treat on Corunna, and to impede the advance of 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 101 

his pursuers ; — these, as far as they are military- 
points, may be left to military critics. 1 

But the questions on which he differed from the 
Envoy were, in the main, political, and though few, 
most of them were of vital importance. 

The Envoy thought that the General should, by 
an earlier move forwards, have attempted to save 
Madrid, or at least to delay its falling into the 
hands of Napoleon. 

Whether this would at any time during the cam- 
paign have been possible, is, and must ever remain, 
matter of opinion. It is vain now to speculate 
whether the populace of Madrid, if they had been 
led by a Palafox and not by a Morla, would or 
would not have emulated their brethren at Sara- 
gossa ; or how far Napoleon would have been suc- 
cessful in overcoming a form of national resistance 
which elsewhere baffled the ablest of his lieutenants. 
This at least is certain, that with all his genius, 
and all the force at his command, the Emperor 
found it a matter of extreme difficulty to obtain 
possession of Madrid without a siege ; and that he 
might have failed had he not been aided by the 
treachery and cowardice of those to whom the 
populace looked as leaders. 

But there can be no doubt of the importance, at 
.such a juncture, of delaying by even a few days 
Napoleon's occupation of Madrid, and of making it 
clear to all the civilized world that the submission 
of the Spanish capital was the result of force, and 
not of national preference. 

Nor was there ever any reason to believe the 

1 Vide Napier, book iv. chap. vi. ; Alison, chap. 1. p. 805, 
note, and p. 857 of vol. vi. edit. 1837 ; " Castlereagh Cor- 
respondence," vol. vi. ; " Life of Sir David Baird," vol. ii. ; 
Lord Londonderry's " Narrative of the War in Spain and 
Portugal," 1829, vol. i. pp. 149 to 289 ; Col. Sorell, " Notes on 
the Campaign of 1808-9," 1828. 



102 MEMOIR OF 

difficulty or risk of an attempt to support any effort 
of the Spaniards to defend Madrid would have been 
so great as to put it out of question as a possible 
move, which a military commander in Moore's posi- 
tion might prudently attempt, and which, therefore, 
it would have been the duty of the British Minister 
to urge on him, as most desirable on political 
grounds. Not to insist on the opinion of the Duke 
of Wellington that it was possible for the force to 
which Junot surrendered at Lisbon to have been at 
Madrid in a month from the convention of Cintra, 
it is clear that Moore himself, up to the 27th of 
November 1 (1808), five days before Napoleon sum- 
moned Madrid to surrender, did not consider it a 
hopeless enterprise " to march upon Madrid, to 
throw himself into the heart of Spain, and thus to* 
run all risks, and share the fortunes of the Spanish 
nation." He then considered such a move, though 
of " greater hazard " than a retreat on Lisbon,. 
*' perhaps worthy of risk, if the Government and 
people of Spain are thought to have still sufficient 
energy and means to recover from their defeats,"' 
and he formally asked the Envoy's opinion as to 
which of the two courses before the General, he, the 
Envoy, considered, on political grounds, the more 
eligible ? 

Even, then, if it be admitted that it never was in 
Moore's power to save Madrid, it cannot be said 
that the Envoy was wrong in pressing on him the 
importance of the attempt up to the time when the 
question was settled by Napoleon's masterly occu- 
pation of the capital — an operation which, even, in 
his biography, stands conspicuous as an instance 
of the wonderful success of " a judicious mixture of 
force and policy." 

The next important point on which the General 
and Envoy differed was, whether, in the event of its. 

1 Vide his letter to Mr. Frere of that date. 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 103 

being impossible to save Madrid, the retreat of the 
British army should be by Gallicia on Corunna, or 
through Portugal on Lisbon ? The General, up to 
the 27th Nov. preferred the latter, the Envoy 
strenuously urged the former, not merely on the 
military grounds of its being the shorter, the safer, 
and the more defensible, the less liable to interrup- 
tion from the enemy, and the more threatening to 
his communications ; but on the political grounds 
that it enabled us to keep our hold on a most 
important province of Spain, to avoid even the 
appearance of deserting the Spanish cause, and 
afforded means of obtaining supplies and reinforce- 
ments to any extent by sea from England, and of 
issuing forth in renewed strength to resume the 
contest whenever opportunity offered. It is un- 
necessary to examine at length the reasons each 
gave for his opinion, since ultimately the line which 
the Envoy preferred was adopted by the General, 
and was an essential part of a movement which, as 
the event proved, saved the south of Spain, had the 
most important bearing on the final issue of the 
great continental struggle, and won from Napoleon 
himself the tribute of unqualified approval, as the 
only move which could have arrested the southward 
progress of the French armies, and for the time, to 
use his own phrase, " given the lock-jaw " to their 
other movements in Spain. 

It was in the discussion on this point that most 
fault was found with the Envoy, both as regarded 
the advice he gave, and the terms in which that 
advice was given. 

If, however, as is now clear, the advice itself was, 
in the main, so sound that the course recommended 
was ultimately adopted by the General, in opposi- 
tion to his own previously expressed decision, and 
if the course so adopted proved most successful at 
an important crisis in a great contest, some passion- 
ate eagerness of expression might be forgiven in 



104 MEMOIR OF 

urging that course, on the part of one who clearly 
foresaw both the magnitude of the interests at stake, 
and the only mode to secure them. 

But in truth, in now reading the correspondence, 
it is not easy to select expressions to which fair 
exception might be taken, though at the time, no 
doubt, some natural irritation must have been felt, 
not the less keenly when it became apparent that 
the arguments used had such strength of reason as 
to carry conviction. 

Up to the 5th December, Moore had adhered to 
the opinion he had expressed to Mr. Frere, that a 
retreat on Portugal, with a view to ulterior opera- 
tions in the south of Spain, was the only alternative 
open to him, if an advance on Madrid should prove 
too dangerous to be attempted. Mr. Frere had, in 
reply to the General's request for his opinion, very 
strongly urged, in a letter already quoted, 1 the 
superior political advantages of adhering to the 
original scheme laid down by the British Govern- 
ment of operating in the north of Spain. As the 
French armies advanced, every day brought some 
fresh confirmation of the soundness of the latter 
view, and at length, on the 5th December, Moore's 
own opinion underwent a change, and he deter- 
mined to give up his previous plan of a retreat on 
Portugal, to advance against Soult on the Carrion, 
and as soon as he had effected the diversion of the 
enemy's forces, which he knew must ensue in order 
to avert the danger threatened to their communica- 
tions, he prepared to retreat on Gallicia. 

This was precisely the course the necessity and 
advantages of which Mr. Frere had been pressing 
on the General's notice. 2 The determination to 

1 Vide pages 93-94. 

2 This appears to have been in accordance not only with 
the views of the Envoy, but of Baird and of other officers 
about him, who had every claim to the General's confidence. 
Vide " Baird's Life," vol. ii. 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 105 

adopt it was taken at Salamanca on the 5th 
December, but intimation of the change of plan 
had not reached Mr. Frere at Truxillo, when on the 
8th December he despatched a letter by Mr. Stuart 
(afterwards Lord Stuart de Rothsay), whom he 
commissioned to press on Sir John Moore the 
arguments used in his letter, pointing out, in the 
strongest terms, the ruin to the Spanish cause, and 
the disgrace to the British arms, which must follow a 
retreat on Portugal without any attempt to arrest or 
divert the French advance, or to defend Gallicia. 

This letter reached Sir John Moore at Toro on 
the 1 6th, when he had already adopted the course 
which had always been advocated by the minister. 
Read by the English public after Moore's death, 
the strong terms in which the letter was expressed 
doubtless appeared unnecessarily harsh and severe. 
But it is only just to the British minister to bear 
in mind that the letter is but one of a series, all 
urging the adoption of the same course, and that, 
had the retreat on Portugal not been abandoned 
(a timely change of purpose of which Mr. Frere was 
not aware when he wrote), the terms used in the 
letter would not have been at all too severe to 
characterise a movement which, as the event proved, 
would have been as fatal a mistake in a military as 
in a political point of view. 

The channel through which this letter was con- 
veyed was not open to objection, as Mr. Stuart was 
a personal friend of Sir John Moore's, and like all 
his friends warmly attached to him ; but Sir John 
Moore had felt much hurt at a former communica- 
tion on the same subject having been sent him by 
a French emigrant officer in the English service, 
whose employment by the minister on so con- 
fidential a mission, was described at the time, and 
after Sir John Moore's death, as not only an act of 
extreme imprudence, but as an intentional insult to 
the British general. 



106 MEMOIR OF 

So much blame has been attributed to Mr. Frere 
in this matter that the transaction may be described 
in greater detail than would be otherwise neces- 
sary. Colonel de Charmilly, a French Royalist, 
naturalised in England, married to the sister of a 
British nobleman, 1 and holding a British commis- 
sion as Colonel in a colonial corps, had gone to- 
Spain with the avowed intention of raising a 
Spanish regiment, for service against Napoleon ; 
having, like many other French Royalists of that 
day, devoted his whole life to oppose the Revolu- 
tion, and Napoleon as the embodiment of revolu- 
tionary ideas. On his way to Madrid he was 
introduced to Sir David Baird and Sir John Moore, 
stayed some days at their head-quarters, and seems 
to have had more than casual communications re- 
garding his plans with them both. Though not 
previously acquainted with either general, his in- 
troductions left no ground for mistrust. A nephew 
of his wife's was an officer in Sir John Moore's 
own regiment, favourably known to the General, 
and present at the time with his regiment at head- 
quarters. 

Reaching Madrid the 28th November, and find- 
ing the city carelessly lulled in the belief that the 
French were still at Burgos, de Charmilly went to 
Aranjuez, to present his letters of introduction to 
the British Envoy, to whom he was personally un- 
known ; and there heard for the first time that the 
French, having forced the Somosierra Pass, threat- 
ened Madrid ; and that the Supreme Junta had 
determined to retire to Toledo. Returning to 
Madrid, for his arms and baggage which he had 
left there, de Charmilly found the capital, not, as 
might have been expected, cowed or panic-stricken 
by the unexpected apparition of the Great Emperor 

1 Dorcas, sister of Sir James Blackwood, Bart., Baron 
Dufferin and Clandeboye. 



JOHN HOOKHAM FEE RE. 107 

with such overwhelming force, but in a ferment of 
popular and patriotic enthusiasm, reminding him 
strongly of the scenes he had witnessed at Paris in 
the first fervour of the Revolution of 1789. The 
mob, hearing he was a British officer, led him 
through barricaded streets and a populace working 
by torchlight at works of defence, to the palace 
where the Junta of defence organized that day, and 
the Spanish commander-in-chief, were in confe- 
rence. The Duke of Infantado, as president of the 
Junta, received him, described their means of re- 
sistance, expressed in the strongest terms their 
determination to use them to the last extremity, 
and urged him to communicate to Moore his con- 
viction of the paramount importance of the English 
army manoeuvring to divert the attention of the 
French and allow time to organize the defence of 
Madrid. Finally the Duke gave the Colonel a 
passport for the express purpose of his going to 
Salamanca to communicate to Moore the state of 
affairs of which he was an eye-witness. On his way 
by the circuitous route indicated to him as the only 
one safe from the patrols of the French cavalry, he 
met the peasantry flocking to the capital with such 
arms as they had, and found the people and the 
Junta at Toledo equally enthusiastic in the national 
cause. At Talavera he, on the 3rd December, 
accidentally learnt that the British Envoy, in fol- 
lowing the movements of the Supreme Junta, had 
just arrived there, and waiting on him to pay his 
respects, de Charmilly found that the Envoy had 
not heard of the popular rising at Madrid, nor of 
the establishment of the new Junta of defence, with 
the Duke del Infantado, a nobleman believed to be 
a real patriot and sincere friend of the British, as 
president. Colonel de Charmilly's intelligence was 
so unexpected and important that Mr. Frere hoped 
it would satisfy Sir John Moore that there was yet 
a chance of directing the British army to some 



108 MEMOIR OF 

better purpose than a retreat on Portugal ; and he 
made de Charmilly the bearer of letters strongly- 
expressing this view, and representing the necessity 
of supporting the determination of the Spanish 
people by all the means which had been entrusted 
to the British General for the purpose, adding that 
he considered the fate of Spain as depending abso- 
lutely, for the present, upon the decision which 
Moore might adopt. 

The intelligence thus conveyed reached Moore 
on the 5 th December, and decided him to recall 
Baird, who was already moving on Corunna, to 
change his own line of retreat, falling back through 
Gallicia instead of on Portugal ; and meantime to 
advance towards Soult on the Carrion, and thus 
threaten the French line of communications. 

Had Mr. Frere's dispatches been confined to the 
letter given to Moore on the 5th, no offence appa- 
rently would have been taken at the employment 
of Colonel de Charmilly as the bearer of the com- 
munication. He was better known to the General 
and his officers than to the Envoy, and any suspi- 
cions Moore may have previously entertained had 
been removed. The intelligence he brought indi- 
cated a turning-point in the conduct of the Spanish 
people and Government ; of the accuracy of his in- 
formation there could be no doubt ; and it impressed 
the General, as it had the Envoy, with a conviction 
that it justified and required an entire change in 
the plan of operations. 

But Mr. Frere had entrusted to de Charmilly a 
second letter, to be delivered only in the event of 
the General persevering in his determination to re- 
treat on Portugal, after he had received the first 
dispatch, and heard de Charmilly's account of the 
popular rising at Madrid. This second letter, de 
Charmilly, ignorant of the effect which the first had 
produced on the General's mind, and the conse- 
quent alterations in his plans, presented the next 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 109 

day. In it Mr. Frere requested that if the General 
adhered to his determination to retire, Colonel 
de Charmilly might be examined before a council 
of war. 

Under the circumstances there can be no doubt 
that this must have appeared to Moore a very un- 
necessary interference with his functions as a mili- 
tary commander, personally and solely responsible 
for the movements of his army ; and it is not sur- 
prising that he should have felt and expressed 
much indignation at what must have appeared 
to him a most unwarrantable proceeding, and that 
it was thus represented by his friends after his 
death. 

But unfortunately for all parties, the General's 
natural indignation at what he imagined to be an 
intentional act of disrespect did not permit him to 
hear the explanation which Colonel de Charmilly 
could have given. 1 Had he been allowed to state 
the circumstances and instructions under which the 
second letter was entrusted to him, Sir John Moore 
would have learnt that, whatever might be thought 
of the course adopted, Mr. Frere's object had been 
misunderstood. The Envoy knew that a retreat 
on Portugal had been ordered, and he could not 
know that the order had been recalled. But he 
believed that if the General were unwilling to incur 
the responsibility of recalling that order, a council 
of war might facilitate the adoption of the only 
course which the Envoy believed, and which the 
result proved, could ensure the honour and safety 
of the army. 

The step was one which, according to the ordi- 
nary rules of official intercourse, nothing short of a 
most clear and urgent necessity could excuse. Any 
justification of it must rest on the momentous 



1 Vide De Charmilly's Narrative, 3rd edit. 18 10, pp. 42 
to 52. 



no MEMOIR OF 

character of the interests at stake ; and judged by 
this light there can be no doubt that the occasion 
was one of importance sufficient to justify almost 
any infraction of the limits which custom and 
reason prescribe to such advice as the representa- 
tive of the Sovereign may offer to a General com- 
manding that Sovereign's forces in the field. 

Under ordinary circumstances it would, of course, 
have been out of the question to employ, in an 
office of such importance and delicacy, a compara- 
tive stranger, and a foreigner. They, however, who 
have insisted on Colonel de Charmilly's disqualifica- 
tions in these respects appear to forget that the 
Envoy, unexpectedly met by him during a hurried 
retreat, had, in the absence of all other trustworthy 
means of conveyance, absolutely no choice but either 
to leave the General in ignorance of the rising of 
Madrid, the most important intelligence he could 
receive, and which was certain to influence all his 
operations, or to send him the information through 
Colonel de Charmilly. Moreover, the whole im- 
portance of the despatch was derived from the news 
which the Colonel himself had brought, of its truth 
and momentous import there could be no doubt ; it 
was imperative to send it across plains scoured by 
hostile cavalry ; hence the necessity for providing 
against risk of the despatches having to be de- 
stroyed, to prevent their falling into the enemy's 
hands, will explain the reason for Mr. Frere reading 
them over to Colonel de Charmilly, and making 
him acquainted with the view he had himself taken 
of the important news which the Colonel had been 
the first to convey. 

That he should unnecessarily have wounded the 
feelings of a brave and devoted soldier was a subject 
of the deepest regret ; but nothing could have ex- 
cused the Envoy had he at so grave a crisis omitted 
any possible precaution for ensuring the fullest 
consideration for facts on which he believed that 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. m 

the honour and existence of the British army de- 
pended. 

Upon the whole, posterity will probably be in- 
clined, in the matter of these letters sent by Colonel 
de Charmilly, to join in the opinion which appears 
to have been formed at the time on the subject by 
Sir David Baird, and which is very clearly expressed 
by the late Lord Londonderry, that while the advice 
given was sound and salutary, and while the Envoy 
was not only justified, but in duty bound to have 
tendered it, the proposal to examine de Charmilly 
before a council of war was one to which the 
General could under no circumstances have acceded, 
and which he naturally resented. 1 

1 Vide "Life of Sir David Baird," by Theodore Hook, 1833, 
vol. ii. pp. 214 to 288; Lord Londonderry's "Narrative of 
the War in Spain and Portugal," 1829, vol. i. pp. 149 to 289. 

Hook says of Mr. Frere's first letter by de Charmilly, that 
the tone and style assumed appeared to many officers on the 
spot, fully competent to form an opinion, " not exactly suited 
to his official situation ;" and that the second letter by de 
Charmilly " naturally irritated " the General ; but of the 
change of purpose to which the letters contributed, Baird 
seems fully to have approved. 

Lord Londonderry says : " Mr. Frere was doubtless fully 
justified in writing in this strain ; as minister from the court 
of England he was perfectly authorized to give advice respect- 
ing the course to be pursued by the English general, even if 
that officer had abstained from requesting it. But Sir John 
Moore having repeatedly solicited his opinion as to the pru- 
dence or imprudence of schemes in agitation, his right to 
speak or write strongly became increased fourfold. 

" Mr. Frere, however, in my humble judgment, erred in 
desiring Col. Charmilly should be examined before a council 
of war prior to any movement being made. . . . It would 
have been not only insulting to the commander of the forces 
to have the judgment of a non-official emigrant set up in 
opposition to his own, but the consequences might have been 
every way ruinous. 

" Sir John Moore dismissed that person with marks of dis- 
satisfaction ; and I think I should have done the same. 

" In spite of all this, however, and in spite of the excessive 
timidity of the Supreme Junta . . . only one opinion can, I 



112 MEMOIR OF 

It is not, however, by isolated acts or expressions 
that such a controversy can be decided. The 
question was, what a powerful army of a great 
nation might do or ought to attempt ; and the 
parties to the controversy must be judged by what 
may ultimately prove to be the intrinsic soundness 
of the views each advocated. It was not thus, how- 
ever, that contemporaries could judge. They could 
not but feel that the General, whose views and acts 
were criticized, had subsequently fallen in his 
country's cause ; and opinions which, if the fate of 
the correspondents had been reversed, would have 
been regarded as inspirations of prophetic states- 
manship and of the truest patriotism, were often 
misread at the time as intentional insults to a dying 
hero. 

Have, then, subsequent events shown that the 
Envoy expected too much from the British army 
under Moore, or urged him to undertake impossi- 
bilities ? If we look only to the experience of 
Moore's campaign it is clear that, as far as the 
General was swayed by the Envoy's advice to 
advance so as to threaten the French communica- 
tions, and then to retreat on Gallicia rather than on 



conceive, be formed as to the soundness of the views taken by- 
Mr. Frere on this occasion." 

Southey, who alone of the contemporary historians does full 
justice to Mr. Frere's services in the Peninsula, seems to 
except from the general commendation of his views and 
conduct, his desire that de Charmilly should be examined 
before a council of war. — " Peninsular War," vol. ii. chap. xxi. 
p. 279. 

Some writers at the time wrote of de Charmilly as a creature 
of Morla's, employed to decoy the British army to destruction, 
with a view to obtain favour for Morla from Napoleon. De 
Charmilly appears completely to have cleared himself of all 
suspicion of any communication whatever with Morla ; and 
there is abundant evidence to prove that the information he 
conveyed as to the state of affairs in Madrid was strictly 
accurate. 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 113 

Portugal, the campaign was a great success, and the 
cost, heavy as it was, not out of proportion to the 
results. 1 It was no fault of the Envoy's that the 
loss was not further reduced by earlier and more 
complete preparations on the line of retreat to 
Corunna, 2 or the results enhanced by the transports, 
which subsequently embarked the army, being sent 
to reinforce it instead of to bring it away from 
Spain. 3 

Still clearer is the testimony which the later cam- 
paigns in the Peninsula bear to the general sound- 
ness of Mr. Frere's views on the principal points 
regarding which he had the misfortune to differ 
from Sir John Moore. 

1 " Notwithstanding the clamour with which this campaign 
has been assailed, as if no army had ever yet suffered such 
misfortunes, the nominal loss was small, and the real loss 
smaller, sinking to nothing when compared with the advantage 
gained." — Napier, bk. iv. ch. vi. p. 356, 8vo. ed. of 1851. 

2 Ibid. p. 358. 

3 Thirteen thousand men, intended as reinforcements for the 
army in Spain, were actually re-landed in England, after being 
shipped, and the transports sent out empty. There can be no 
doubt that the ministry were prepared to reinforce Moore ; 
and there were means at hand, as the Duke of York showed, 
of raising the force in Spain to a strength of 60,000 rank and 
file. But Moore did not see any paramount necessity for 
augmenting the force in Spain. As late as the 13th November, 
writing to Lord William Bentinck, who had been acting as 
British Envoy up to the time of Mr. Frere's arrival, he said : 
" I have no objection to you or Mr. Frere representing the 
necessity of as many more British troops as you think proper." 
But he differed from the view they had taken, and which 
subsequent experience proved to be correct, that on the 
English, and not on the Spanish armies, must fall the main 
burden of the task to be executed. " I differ," he said, " only 
with you in one point. When you say the chief and great 
obstacle, and resistance to the French, will be afforded by the 
English army. If that be so, Spain is lost." And after ex- 
pressing his conviction that the salvation of Spain depended 
mainly on the Spaniards, he added : " I am, therefore, much 
more anxious to see exertion and energy in the Government 
than to have my force augmented." — Vide " Moore's Narra- 
tive," p. 24. 

I 



114 MEMOIR OF 

I do not, of course, refer to any comparison either 
in conduct or results between the one campaign 
which it was Moore's fortune to conduct, and the 
series of campaigns under Wellington. Napoleon's 
absence from among Wellington's immediate ad- 
versaries in Spain, would alone render any such 
comparison impossible. I refer simply to those 
characteristic and peculiar local difficulties in carry- 
ing on the war in the Peninsula, which appeared to 
Moore so great as to render any efficient action by 
his army almost hopeless ; and which it has been 
said by many historians of high character as well as 
by party writers of the day, that Mr. Frere failed 
either to see or to estimate at their proper value. 
The list extends to nearly all the shortcomings and 
failings of the Spaniards as a nation, and even the 
deficiencies of their country in roads or resources. 
One of the complaints most frequently implied as 
well as directly urged, is the omission to supply the 
accurate intelligence on which so much of the suc- 
cess of military operations depended. 

It is unnecessary to dwell on the obvious fact 
that no Envoy could get from the Junta more than 
they knew, and that they were generally as ill- 
informed as their allies regarding what was really 
going on in other parts of Spain. Perhaps, now 
that the Spaniards and their peculiarities are better 
understood by their neighbours than they were a 
generation ago, our surprise at this national charac- 
teristic of their public life may be less than was felt 
by our forefathers. At any rate, it is clear that 
then, as now, he who would possess accurate in- 
formation regarding political affairs in Spain, must 
gather his facts for himself, and not trust to the 
Government for them — and for such a task the 
General had as great facilities as the Envoy. The 
latter had only landed at Corunna towards the end 
of October, and did not reach Aranjuez, where the 
Junta was assembled, for several weeks afterwards. 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 115 

The General, on the other hand, had been in the 
Peninsula since the latter end of the previous Au- 
gust, and in supreme command of the British forces 
during the greater part of the time. He had halted 
at Salamanca from the 13th November to the 12th 
December, and had there better opportunities than 
the Envoy could possess at Aranjuez, of learning 
for himself everything essential to the conduct of 
the war. 

But as regards this and all other difficulties aris- 
ing from local peculiarities, whether of national 
character or of a political or physical nature, it is 
obvious that they were not less obstacles to the 
later than to the earlier campaigns ; why then were 
they not found as formidable by Wellington as they 
appeared to Moore ? 

The difference clearly was not merely or mainly 
in the genius or temperament of the two com- 
manders. It was greatly due to their previous 
training and experience. 

For an English general with British troops to 
conduct active operations in Spain, at the beginning 
of this century, meant to carry on war in a country 
with the language and manners of which few of the 
soldiers, or even of the best educated and accom- 
plished of the officers, had the slightest acquaint- 
ance — to disarm the hostility of a proud, jealous, 
sensitive, and high-spirited race — to avoid affront- 
ing the prejudices of an uneducated populace, or 
the bigotry of a fanatical and all-powerful priest- 
hood — to draw supplies of money and food from a 
country where internal commerce was nearly ex- 
tinct, and which was almost destitute of roads pass- 
able by wheeled carriages — to depend on a maritime 
base of operations many hundreds of miles distant, 
and to use as auxiliaries the armies of a people 
possessed indeed of many soldierlike qualities, but 
unaccustomed to united and systematic subordina- 
tion ; and who required, in order to turn them to 



Ii6 MEMOIR OF 

the best account, sometimes to be provided with an 
independent field of action for themselves, under 
their own commanders; and sometimes to be assimi- 
lated to our own troops, under British discipline and 
officers. 

Most of the superior officers in Napoleon's army 
had acquired, more or less, by long experience in 
foreign war, the art of performing some portions of 
such a task as this; but it is no exaggeration to say 
that, at the commencement of the Peninsular War, 
it was impossible for any English general, with 
merely European experience, to have learnt such a 
lesson, except by instinct or theoretical reading. 
Moore had not, in this respect, been more fortunate 
than his contemporaries. He undertook the charge 
of the expedition as a matter of duty, with a sad 
foreboding of the certainty of failure, 1 and nothing 
in his previous experience gave him much help in 
overcoming the peculiar difficulties of his position. 

But no part of the task presented any untried or 



1 Stapleton thus describes Moore's last interview with the 
secretary at war : " Lord Castlereagh disclosed to the Cabi- 
net the parting words addressed to him by Sir John. After 
the latter had had his final interview, had taken his leave, 
and actually closed the door, he re-opened it, and said to 
Lord Castlereagh, ' Remember, my Lord, I protest against 
the expedition, and foretell its failure.' Having thus disbur- 
dened his mind, he instantly withdrew, left the office, and 
proceeded to Portsmouth to take the command of the expedi- 
tion. When Lord Castlereagh mentioned this circumstance 
to the Cabinet, Mr. Canning could not help exclaiming, 
' Good God ! and do you really mean to say that you allowed 
a man entertaining such feelings with regard to the expedi- 
tion, to go and assume the command of it?' It was in con- 
sequence of what passed in the Cabinet respecting this inter- 
view, that an official letter, which is described as equivalent to 
one demanding his resignation, was sent after him. But Sir 
John did not take the hint, sent a dignified reply, and sailed 
with the expedition." — Stapleton's George Canning and his 
Times, 1859, p. 160. 



JOHN HOOKHAM ERE RE. 117 

insuperable difficulty to one who, like Wellesley, 
had practised war on a large scale, and in inde- 
pendent command, in India ; and the reader who 
will carefully study " Sir Arthur Wellesley's Indian 
Despatches," will find every one of the character- 
istic difficulties of Peninsular warfare faced and 
overcome in the Deccan, by exactly the same qua- 
lities and management which were subsequently so 
successful in Spain. 1 

It is a matter of more than personal or passing 



1 A striking example will be found in one of his earliest 
letters to Lord Castlereagh, dated Corunna, 21st July, 1808. 
His correspondence at that time not only shows a sound ap- 
preciation of the state of affairs in Spain, but is full of practical 
suggestions for the conduct of the war, which could not then 
have been the result of Peninsular experience ; e.g. the recom- 
mendation that 30,000 Portuguese troops should be raised by 
Great Britain, as auxiliaries to 20,000 British troops. — Vide 
" Despatches," vol. iv. pp. 24-43. 

In a subsequent letter, written Oct. 19, 1808, after his return 
to England, and when he had no command in the Peninsula, 
he offers to Lord Castlereagh advice which is not less re- 
markable for its substance than from its being volunteered by 
one so constitutionally averse from offering advice unasked. 
After pointing out the importance of magazines, he observes: 
" All these difficulties of communication, and supply of maga- 
zines to which, as I told you in a former [letter], scarcely one 
of us has turned his mind, render it most desirable that our 
army should be employed on the enemy's flank and on the 
coast " 

In a PS. he adds : " I recommend to you to make all your 
arrangements for forming a magazine in the heart of Spain, 
whether the General will call for it or not. After what has 
passed lately [relative to the convention of Cintra], the gene- 
ral officers will be disinclined to take upon themselves any- 
thing excepting the performance of their military duty under 
their instructions, and Sir John Moore will be unwilling to 
throw himself into the heart of Spain unless he is ordered to 
do so, or to make arrangements preparatory to that operation 
till it will be ordered by Government, when such arrange- 
ments will be too late." — Castlereagh Correspondence, vol. vi. 
pp. 476-481. 



n8 MEMOIR OF 

interest to note this essential difference in the ex- 
perience and opportunities of the two generals. 
For if our officers can have no brighter example 
than Moore in all the moral and personal qualities 
which go to form the perfect soldier, it is certain 
that they will never, as Wellington did, lead to 
habitual victory the armies of an empire so ex- 
tended and composed of such varied materials as 
that of England, if they lack the practice and expe- 
rience in warfare in ruder countries, which gave to 
the genius of Wellington its early development. 

Much of the blame which was at the time so 
freely thrown on Mr. Frere by those who asserted 
that he did not see, or failed to appreciate, the ob- 
stacles to be overcome by the British general, was 
due to the fact that he saw more clearly than a large 
proportion of the British public then did, the essen- 
tial points wherein the contest in Spain differed 
from the other continental wars in which we had 
previously taken part against Napoleon, and the 
vastly superior importance of the issues at stake. 
It was not a dynastic, but a national struggle for 
independence, and its peculiar significance was the 
greater, because the Spaniards had' not the advan- 
tage, which the Germans and Russians afterwards 
possessed, of a settled government, able to share 
and direct their patriotic enthusiasm. The great 
Whig party had, in many respects, altered the posi- 
tion which it had held, during the earlier years of 
the French Revolution, in all discussions with re- 
gard to the duty and interest of England. Many 
of those who had ceased to look on a contest with 
Napoleon as war against the liberties of mankind, 
were, nevertheless, so dazzled by his achievements, 
that they regarded hostilities against him almost as 
if waged against an irresistible fate ; and they failed 
to see that the cause of the Spaniards was not only 
the cause of national liberty against foreign tyranny, 
but that it contained within itself elements of sue- 



JOHN HO O KH AM FEE RE. 119 

cess which could not be looked for in any purely 
dynastic contest. 1 

Thus to the amount of obloquy which would 
naturally have fallen on all who had any share in 
what was then regarded as a most unfortunate ex- 
pedition, was added much of party bitterness ; and 
the circumstances of Sir John Moore's death pre- 
cluded such defence of those who differed from him, 
as might have been possible had all lived to receive 
their fair award of praise or blame from their 
countrymen. When urged in after years to leave 
on record an answer to the calumnies and unjust 
criticism to which he had been subjected, Mr. Frere 
replied that the time for his doing so for himself 
had gone by, and that as one who was long since 
passed from political life, he was willing to leave it 



1 The position of the Whigs at this time, and their mistaken 
course regarding the Peninsular War, have been well described 
by Lord Russell, who speaks with unusual authority, both on 
account of having been in early life an eye-witness of the 
state of affairs in the Peninsula, and from his intimate lifelong 
acquaintance with all that concerns that party. 

After describing the character of the Spanish insurrection, 
and the obvious duty and interest of England with regard to 
it, Lord Russell comments on the inability of Lord Grenville 
and the leaders of the Whigs to comprehend the true nature 
and bearing of the contest, and quotes Mr. Horner's opinion, 
in 181 3, as to the serious character of the mistake they had 
made in 1808-9, which Horner said he had never "ceased to 
lament," as " so inconsistent with true Whig principles of con- 
tinental policy, so revolting to the popular feelings of the 
country, and to every true feeling for the liberties and inde- 
pendence of mankind." — Selections from Earl Russell's 
Speeches and Despatches, Longmans, London, 1870, vol. i. 

p. 4- 

Speaking of Lord Holland as he saw him at Corunna, 
Crabb Robinson says : " Lord Holland was known to be 
among the warmest friends of the Spanish cause ; in that 
respect differing from the policy of his Whig friends, who by 
nothing so much estranged me from their party as by their 
endeavour to force the English Government to abandon the 
Spanish patriots." — Crabb Robinson, vol. i. p. 278. 



120 MEMOIR OF 

to history to judge whether he or those from whom 
he differed had best estimated what an English 
army in Spain could be fairly expected to achieve. 
He added, that the manner of Sir John Moore's 
death had prevented him from answering at the 
time, in any hostile or controversial tone, what 
Moore's family and friends had written and pub- 
lished — " but," he added, " I have often been 
tempted to answer what others said of my having 
been deceived by Morla. This was utterly false ; I 
never saw Morla; I was only in Madrid at that 
period for a few hours, on my way through to Aran- 
juez ; and so far from being deceived by Morla, 
some of the leading men at Madrid with whom I 
was acquainted, came to me at Aranjuez, and com- 
municated to me their suspicions of his fidelity ; 
and I went so far as to say that I would, in my 
communications 'with the Junta, act on their belief 
of his infidelity, if they were prepared to take the 
steps necessary to justify my so doing." 

In speaking of these events, Mr. Frere never 
under-estimated the difficulties of defending Madrid 
against Napoleon ; but he referred to the effect of 
Moore's diversion, late as it was, to prove that the 
difficulties were not all in Napoleon's favour, and 
to the experience of subsequent years, as proving 
that it was impossible to calculate the effect on the 
French of the slightest reverse at that particular 
moment, or the degree to which the Spaniards 
would have been encouraged to resistance, by know- 
ing that the English were not going to desert them. 
He said, " I certainly did expect much from them 
at that time, but not so much as their subsequent 
conduct justified. It is almost impossible to give 
an adequate idea of their intense hatred of the 
French, or of the kind of fellow - feeling which 
banded Spaniards of the most discordant opinions, 
to act for the one object whenever they had any- 
thing to do against the French ; and it is equally 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 121 

impossible for any one who does not intimately 
know the Spanish character to appreciate the extent 
to which their hatred of the French interfered with 
all the French operations. There was no beggar 
so poor that bribery could induce him to carry the 
French despatches. These were brought to our 
officers to an extent incredible to those who have 
not experience of a war carried on against the na- 
tional feeling of the country which is the scene of 
operations. I had an intercepted despatch of 
Soult's when he was on the Douro, complaining 
that for two months he had had no despatch from 
Madrid. This was brought to me by a simple 
countryman, who gave this account of the way in 
which he came by it. He told me he was coming 
along a narrow road when he heard the clatter of 
hoofs behind him, and some one calling to him to 
get out of the way. He turned, and saw a French 
trooper riding after him, and stepping aside, as the 
Frenchman passed, he picked up a stone and threw 
it with such force at his back, that, as he said, ' I 
brought him to the ground, and killed him with my 
knife.' He described the action just as he would 
have related the killing of a weasel, or any other 
vermin in a hedge, and seemed to take it quite as a 
matter of course that he should have killed the 
Frenchman as soon as he saw that he had the 
power to do so. ' And there,' he said to me, ' is 
what I found upon him,' showing the despatches. 
Some of the reports of the French medical staff, 
which I saw at the time, were occupied with the 
description of cases brought into hospital at Mad- 
rid, where the men were supposed to have been 
poisoned in the wine-shops in the city. This the 
medical author of the report discredited, but know- 
ing how intense and bitter was the hatred of the 
common people against the French, and how meri- 
torious they believed the destruction of a French- 
man to be, I doubted at the time whether the 



122 MEMOIR OF 

horrible suspicion was as unfounded as the French 
medical officer supposed. Whatever else might 
have resulted from Moore's having been able to 
hold a position in the north of Spain, instead 
of embarking, there can be no doubt that the na- 
tional spirit which would have been roused against 
the French would have most seriously impeded 
their operations in other parts of the Peninsula, 
and rendered it almost impossible even for the 
military genius of Napoleon to have maintained 
and fed in the mountains, or the north coast of 
Spain, such an army as would have been necessary 
to have forcibly ejected the English from a strong- 
hold on the coast." 

Fortunately for England, for Spain, and for 
Europe, the British Government, though hard 
pressed, in and out of Parliament, during the spring 
of 1809, to abandon the contest in the Peninsula, 
had resolved to continue it, and to entrust its con- 
duct to one who had already shown how thoroughly 
he understood the conditions on which it must be 
fought out. 

But the interval between the re-embarkation of 
the last of Moore's army at Corunna, in January, 
and Sir Arthur Wellesley's arrival at Lisbon in 
April, was a period of unexampled trial and sore 
discouragement to the Spaniards ; and if anything 
did, from time to time, occur during those winter 
months to cheer their hopes of ultimate victory, 
it was less often in the shape of success, however 
small, than in some fresh proof of the unconquer- 
able spirit of the people, when contending against 
the heaviest odds, and under every circumstance of 
discouragement. 

Thus, the second siege of Saragossa, though it 
ended in the reduction of the illustrious city 
(February 22nd, 1809), read many a memorable 
lesson, alike to the Spaniards, their enemies, and 
their allies. 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 123 

On the Catalan coast, British naval captains like 
Lord Cochrane, showed how much might be done 
by enterprising officers to aid the Spaniards in im- 
peding the operations of the French generals in 
the maritime districts. 

At the other extremity of the French line of 
operations, Romana, with not less courage and en- 
terprise, and with better fortune than Palafox, 
maintained an unequal contest against Soult and 
Ney, amid the mountains of Gallicia. Nothing 
could well have been more desperate than his posi- 
tion after the embarkation of Moore's army and 
throughout the winter. He appeared destined to 
certain destruction or capture, with no prospect but 
that of an ignominious death if he were taken. 
Yet routed, and, as the French believed, practically 
annihilated at Monterrey in February, he re-appeared 
in March to surprise the garrison of Villafranca, to 
make prisoners of 800 of Soult 's best soldiers, and 
to contribute more than any other single cause to 
arrest Soult's progress southwards from Oporto. 

Sir John Cradock, on whom had devolved the 
command of the British troops left in garrison in 
Portugal after Moore's death, was a brave and 
capable officer ; but he was necessarily unacquainted 
with the effect which the results of Moore's cam- 
paign might have on the views of the British 
Government ; and he had neither the means nor the 
authority required for any but temporary disposi- 
tions of the force at his command. Many measures 
were, however, taken by him, or with his consent, 
which had an important bearing on the success of 
after-operations. English officers were employed 
to discipline and command Portuguese troops, and 
though the full effects of this system were not 
realised till Beresford was placed in supreme com- 
mand of the Portuguese forces later in the year, the 
services rendered by men like Colonels Trant and 
Patrick, and Sir Robert Wilson, in organizing and 



124 MEMOIR OF 

leading Portuguese levies during the winter and 
early spring, formed a bond of union between the 
English soldiers and their allies which was turned 
to most valuable account by Wellington in his sub-r 
sequent campaigns. 

Sir Robert Wilson's position, in particular, speedily 
became one of great importance. Endowed with 
great natural abilities as a soldier, and with unusual 
powers of influencing and commanding men, he 
speedily extended the sphere of his operations 
across the Spanish frontier to the country round 
Ciudad Rodrigo, where his presence was of the 
utmost importance, as threatening Soult's flank 
should he move southwards towards Lisbon, and 
interrupting his communications with Ney and with 
Madrid. Mr. Frere had prevailed on the Supreme 
Junta to confer on Sir Robert the rank of a Briga- 
dier-General in the Spanish army, and thus gave 
equal scope to his enterprise on both sides the 
border. 

It was well that the formidable obstacles they 
encountered at either extremity of the line of their 
invading armies, disinclined the French to advance 
southwards ; for the Spanish armies which nominally 
covered the provinces south of the Tagus, were not 
in a condition to offer any effective resistance. 

There is a dreary uniformity about the description 
of all the Spanish forces at this time, between the 
Portuguese frontier and Catalonia. " In such 
miserable circumstances that increase of numbers 
brought no increase of strength." "Arms, clothing, 
and provisions were wanting." " The army was 
alike without resources, discipline, or system ; in 
want of efficient officers of every rank, and those 
which there were, divided into cabals and factions." 
And worst feature of all, neither the superior officers 
nor the central Government were aware of their 
military deficiencies. When prudence would have 
dictated an entirely defensive policy, and the devo- 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 125 

tion of their whole time and resources to organisa- 
tion and discipline, each general as he succeeded to 
supreme command, planned extensive and combined 
operations on the largest scale, such as required for 
their successful execution the best of troops, of 
officers and means ; as a natural consequence, one 
commander after another incurred speedy and 
ignominious defeat, whenever a general action was 
risked. It has been truly said by Southey, that 
this national incapacity for seeing their own defects, 
which always exposed their armies to defeat, never- 
theless, as a nation, rendered the Spaniards invin- 
cible ; and that the French could have invaded no 
people whom it was so easy to rout, none whom it 
was so impossible to subdue. 

Throughout the winter, Mr. Frere continued at 
his post, with the Supreme Junta, which had estab- 
lished itself at Seville ; and, in every way by his 
influence and advice powerfully aided the common 
cause. It was greatly owing to the confidence with 
which his personal character inspired the Junta, 
that they seem never for a moment to have wavered 
in the trust they reposed in the good faith of the 
British Government, and the certainty of its con- 
tinued hearty support ; and that they turned a deaf 
ear to the reports industriously propagated by the 
French that the British Government was withdraw- 
ing its troops from the Peninsula, and that they 
would never return. To Romana and Sir Robert 
Wilson, Mr. Frere's correspondence and his ener- 
getic support of their views with the Supreme Junta, 
were of the utmost value. In his communications 
with that body, he exposed with just and unsparing 
criticism the defects of the Spanish armies, and the 
short-comings of their generals ; and exerted him- 
self incessantly, though unfortunately with but par- 
tial success, to have the commands of the scattered 
corps combined, and entrusted, with full powers as 
commander-in-chief, to a single competent officer. 



126 MEMOIR OF 

A good illustration of the difficulties of his posi- 
tion, and the extent of the personal influence he 
had acquired, was afforded in February. Sir George 
Smith had been sent to Cadiz, without previous 
reference to the British Minister, to provide for the 
possible case of British troops being needed there. 
Through excess of zeal Sir George considerably- 
exceeded his instructions. He informed the Spanish 
Governor that he was empowered to require that 
British troops should be permitted to garrison 
Cadiz ; and without even waiting for the consent of 
the Spanish authorities, or communicating with the 
British Minister, he wrote to Sir John Cradock to 
send troops from Portugal. The Spaniards natur- 
ally took alarm, which was increased by the secrecy 
and suddenness of the move, and by its taking the 
British Minister as well as themselves by surprise. 
The Supreme Junta, sharing the popular feeling, 
had further cause for uneasiness on its own account, 
for the local authorities of Cadiz, jealous of the 
central Government, spread reports that its members 
were in league with traitors to deliver up the last 
remaining arsenal of Spain into the hands of 
foreigners. In the course of the discussion Mr. 
Frere appealed to the Junta in the following terms : 
" The members of the Junta will do me the justice 
to admit that I have never endeavoured to promote 
the interests of my nation but as being essentially 
connected with those of their own. If, however, I 
have always been guided by the same sentiments 
and the same views which a Spanish politician 
might have, I do not think it is to depart from them, 
if I deliver the same opinion which I should give 
had I the honour of occupying a place in the council 
of your nation, viz., That the whole policy of the 
Spanish Government rests essentially on a per- 
suasion of perfect good faith on the part of England, 
and that it is important to confirm it more and 
more, by testimonies of mutual confidence, and by 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 127 

avoiding the slightest appearance of distrust be- 
tween Government and Government." This appeal 
had the desired effect. Leave was given that any- 
British troops which had arrived or might arrive at 
Cadiz should disembark, and the mode of best 
employing them was discussed. Ultimately the 
British Minister was asked to select the Spanish 
Governor of Cadiz ; and though he of course de- 
clined the responsibility involved in such an unusual 
mark of confidence, the correspondence ended in a 
manner which marked unequivocally the extent to 
which the Spaniards trusted to the honour of their 
English allies. 

While these discussions were going on at Seville, 
an incident had occurred during a popular tumult at 
Cadiz, which showed that the feeling of confidence 
in the English was not confined to the ruling 
authorities. The people had risen in insurrection 
on an alarm that the fortifications were to be 
entrusted to traitors and foreigners, and, at the 
instance of the Governor and the Guardian of the 
Capucins, some English officers who could speak 
Spanish were permitted to assure the populace that 
the British troops would not interfere in the 
internal affairs of the city, but would assist in de- 
fending it. So powerful was the impression pro- 
duced on the popular mind by what the British 
officers said, that the mob proceeded to demand 
that the fortifications should be examined and 
reported on by them ; and the English general 
having appeared on a balcony with some of the 
authorities, and declared his satisfaction with the 
arrangements made, the mob dispersed with loud 
vivas "for King George and King Ferdinand !" 

On the 22nd April, 1809, Sir Arthur Wellesley 
landed at Lisbon and assumed the command of the 
British and Portuguese troops in the Peninsula. In 
less than a month he had concentrated his dispos- 
able force at Coimbra, forced the passage of the 



128 MEMOIR OF 

Douro, and driven Soult, with the loss of all his 
artillery, baggage, and one fourth of his men, into 
the mountains of Gallicia. Suspending the pursuit 
on the 1 8th of May, he turned to join the Spanish 
General Cuesta, in operating against Victor in the 
valley of the Tagus. Having received the full 
permission of the British Government to extend his 
operations into Spain, by the 20th of July he had 
marched the greater part of his force more than 
three hundred miles, effected a junction with Cuesta 
at Oropesa, within five marches of Madrid, and had 
it been possible to induce the obstinate old Spanish 
general to move at the critical moment, he would 
have attacked Victor on the 23rd in such a position 
and with such superior force, that the defeat of the 
French seemed inevitable. 

Cuesta's obstinacy enabled Victor to extricate 
himself and to effect a junction with King Joseph 
and Sebastiani, but did not save the French from 
defeat when, disregarding the sounder advice of 
Jourdan, Victor assumed the offensive, attacked the 
combined English and Spanish armies at Talavera 
on the 27th and 28th of July, and, after two days of 
desperate fighting, was forced to retreat, leaving 
seventeen pieces of cannon in the hands of the allies. 

The utter want of effective co-operation from the 
Spaniards disabled Sir Arthur from following up his 
victory, and the experience of the whole campaign 
taught him that with such a small force of British 
troops as had been entrusted to him, and with such 
inefficient allies, no skill or energy on his part 
could enable him to act on the offensive, against the 
vastly superior French force, with any chance of 
ultimate and permanent success. Thenceforward 
he laid down for himself and rigidly carried out an 
entirely different system. Acting strictly on the 
defensive, he patiently built up that army of Eng- 
lish and allied troops with which, as he afterwards 
said, he "could go anywhere, and do anything." 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 129 

But the task required for its successful execution 
not only every quality of a great commander, but 
time ; and it was not for a year and a half after his 
victory at Talavera, nor till he had forced the wave 
of invasion to break itself against the rocks of 
Torres Vedras, that he was able to resume the 
offensive, in that series of masterly campaigns which, 
in the course of four years of incessant fighting, drove 
the French armies out of Spain, and enabled him to 
carry the war into France. 

On the 1st of August Mr. Frere's functions as 
British Minister in Spain were terminated by the 
arrival of the Marquis Wellesley. He had been 
appointed Ambassador early in April, but had been 
disabled by illness from leaving England till the 
24th of July. He landed at Cadiz on the fourth 
morning after the battle of Talavera, in the midst 
of the excitement consequent on the news of his 
brother's great victory, and was received with every 
mark of public honour and popular enthusiasm. 

Mr. Frere carried with him into his retirement 
the personal esteem, respect and entire confidence of 
all the best men belonging to the Spanish Govern- 
ment and armies with whom he came in contact. 
When he had laid down his office, the Supreme 
Central Junta, who, with all their faults, had never 
shown themselves indifferent to services rendered 
to the Spanish cause, applied to his successor to 
obtain the sanction of the King of England for 
their bestowing on him, in the name of the Spanish 
Sovereign, a Castilian title of honour, that of ' Mar- 
quez de la Union,' as " a mark of their acknowledg- 
ment of the zeal with which he had laboured to 
promote the friendly union and common interest of 
the two countries." Such honours have never been 
lightly granted to foreigners of even the highest 
rank in Spain, and never without the ostensible 
reason of great services rendered to the Spanish 
crown or nation. In conveying to Mr. Frere the 

K 



130 MEMOIR OF 

King's permission to accept the title, Lord Wel- 
lesley wrote : — 

" I am further commanded to communicate to 
you that His Majesty's condescending goodness, in 
permitting you to accept this mark of the esteem 
and gratitude of Spain, is intended as a proof of 
His Majesty's most gracious acceptance and appro- 
bation of your general conduct in the discharge of 
the duties of your mission in Spain. 

" I beg leave to offer you my congratulations on 
this distinguished mark of His Majesty's royal 
favour and approbation, and to express the peculiar 
satisfaction with which I obey His Majesty's most 
gracious commands on this occasion." 

From the few words of cold and rather formal 
courtesy in which this letter was acknowledged, it 
does not appear as if Mr. Frere thought that the 
permission of his Sovereign to accept a Spanish 
title, or the stately periods of the Ambassador's 
congratulations, were in themselves a suitable 
recognition of the services he had rendered his own 
country. But, as far as the Spaniards were con- 
cerned, he felt then, and ever retained, a deep sense 
of the only mark it was in their power to bestow of 
their gratitude for his exertions in the common 
cause of national freedom. 

Some weeks later, in a private letter, Lord 
Wellesley, referring to the formalities connected 
with the grant of the title, added " amidst all the 
delays and omissions of this (the Spanish) Govern- 
ment, it has at length performed its duty towards 
you." Two months' severe experience had shown 
him how trying were the responsibilities of the 
office in which Mr. Frere had laboured, under 
peculiar disadvantages. In a letter to his brother 
dated about the same time, Lord Wellesley said 
with unaffected bitterness, " I am worked like a 
galley-slave, and can effect nothing." He had 
already realised the truth of the warning previously 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 131 

received from that brother, when Sir Arthur, re- 
ferring to Lord Wellesley's acceptance of office as 
Ambassador to Spain, wrote to him, " You have 
undertaken an Herculean task ; and God knows 
that the chances of success are infinitely against 
you." 

In truth, arduous as had been the duties of 
British envoy in Spain before Sir Arthur Wellesley's 
arrival, they were in no respect rendered more easy 
to discharge when the contest was renewed in the 
valley of the Tagus. During the winter, with little 
external support, and mainly by personal influence 
and character, Mr. Frere had had to meet all the 
obstacles created by the suspicions of the Spaniards, 
to encourage them under reverses the most dis- 
heartening, and, what was far more difficult, to 
moderate their inordinate self-confidence, on the 
slightest return of good fortune. All this was not 
impossible to one who thoroughly understood and 
ardently sympathised with the Spaniards ; but the 
case was far different when, as Envoy whose 
successor had long since been appointed, and whilst 
holding office, as he himself expressed it, " only 
from day to day — looking for the arrival of his 
successor by the first fair wind," Mr. Frere had to 
face all the obstacles so graphically described in the 
Wellington despatches written during the Talavera 
campaign. 

The tone of those letters which are addressed to 
Mr. Frere, shows how fully Sir Arthur appreciated 
the departing Envoy's efforts to aid him, and even 
when smarting under the disappointment of losing 
the fruits of his victory at Talavera, through the 
obstinacy of Cuesta and the supineness of the 
Spanish authorities, he wound up a letter to Lord 
Wellesley, full of bitter complaints of the Spaniards, 
by adding, " I must do the late British Minister 
the justice to declare that I do not conceive that 
this deficiency of supplies for the army is at all to 



132 MEMOIR OF 

be attributed to any neglect or omission on his part." 
Their relations had indeed from the first been of 
the most cordial and confidential character. 1 The 
General had at his disposal every advantage that 
Mr. Frere's experience, or his authority and posi- 
tion as Envoy could afford. The British officers 
attached as agents to the Spanish generals, who 
had in the first instance been directed to report 
to the Envoy, were instructed by him to consider 
themselves under Sir Arthur's orders. These in- 
structions, after Mr. Frere's departure, were for 
some time suspended ; with effects the reverse of 
beneficial to the public service. 2 Finally, all the 
influence Mr. Frere possessed with the Supreme 
Junta, had been used to obtain for Sir Arthur 
Wellesley the rank of Captain-General of the 
Spanish forces, 3 and to substitute for Cuesta a 
younger and less impracticable commander of the 
main Spanish army in the south of the Peninsula. 

Neither of these two latter measures was formally 
completed till Mr. Frere's successor had arrived, 
but both were carried mainly by his influence with 
the Supreme Junta, and had they been adopted 
at the time when, he first recommended them, there 
can be little doubt but that they would materially 
have altered the results of the campaign. 

At such a moment the supersession of the Envoy 
by any one possessing the higher office and autho- 
rity of Ambassador, made a considerable change in 



1 Mr. Frere " not being deterred from the performance of 
his duty by the clamour raised against him in England, but 
delivering his opinion to the British General, upon the same 
footing, he said, as he should have done, had he been hold- 
ing a private conversation with Sir Arthur, and as he should 
equally have ventured to do had he been residing casually in 
Spain in a private character." — Southey, vol. II. chap. xxiv. 

P- 399- 

2 Vide " Whittingham's Memoirs," p. ioo, ed. 1868. 

3 This office had been offered to and declined by Moore. 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 133 

the position of the general. In many cases it would 
have been a decided advantage to him to have such 
a post filled by a brother ; but, in this instance, such 
relationship was not needed in order to secure entire 
cordiality of feeling and unity of action ; and Lord 
Wellesley's appointment tended to place his younger 
brother in a position of relative subordination, so 
similar to that which he had previously held under 
the great pro-consul in India, that it could hardly 
be entirely agreeable to one of Sir Arthur's energy 
and force of character. It is not therefore impro- 
bable that the young general was " uneasy at his 
brother's advent into Spain," and that he would 
have been well pleased to retain Mr. Frere as his 
coadjutor. 1 

Regarding his own services at this period Mr. 

1 Vide " Whittingham's Memoirs " as above. The position 
which General Whittingham occupied while Lord Wellesley 
remained in Spain, and the confidence with which he was 
regarded by all the parties referred to, gave him peculiar 
facilities for judging correctly as to the views and feelings of 
the two illustrious brothers on such a subject. There are 
many indications in their published correspondence which 
tend to support the view expressed by the author of the 
Memoirs ; and though with such men the feeling could never 
wittingly have interfered with duty, there can be no doubt 
that Lord Wellesley, as Ambassador in Spain, was placed in 
a false position, and might have greatly increased his brother's 
difficulties, had not his mission been terminated by other 
considerations, after a little more than three months' tenure 
of the post. 

It may not be out of place here to remark that, except by 
Southey, and in some of Wellington's despatches, scant 
justice has been done to the great services of General Whit- 
tingham throughout the war, and notably at a very critical 
juncture of the battle of Talavera. His Memoirs, as far as 
they relate to his own proceedings in Spain, contain many 
valuable contributions to the history of the great struggle, 
illustrating the career of one of the most active and dis- 
tinguished of the British military agents employed with the 
Spanish armies, and the effect which their labours had on the 
condition of the Spanish troops, and through them, on the 
later operations of the war. 



134 MEMOIR OF 

Frere never could be induced to publish a line, in 
addition to the official despatches which were laid 
before Parliament. But long after these events had 
become matters of bygone history he would some- 
times dwell on his recollections of the men who 
had taken part with him in them. 

Of Wellington's military genius it is hardly 
necessary to say that he had anticipated the esti- 
mate which history has recorded. Speaking after- 
wards of him he said, " I never met Wellington in 
Spain but once in Seville, when he came to meet 
the Junta — but I saw directly, what I had gathered 
from his letters, that he thoroughly understood the 
Spaniards — -that he took a right view of the nature 
of the contest, and I never had a doubt but that, 
if he were allowed by the people at home, he would 
carry it to a successful issue." 

" He never had the same means which Moore 
had, nor the same power of calling for reinforce- 
ments which Moore might have had. The first in- 
tention of the English Government was to confine 
his operations almost entirely to Portugal, and leave 
to act in Spain was given him later, and with some 
hesitation." 

In reference to some criticism on the Talavera 
campaign, Mr. Frere said, " It did not seem to me 
at all rashly undertaken. In fact, had almost any 
one of the generals except old Cuesta been in com- 
mand, it must have been a great success. Wel- 
lington's combinations were so good, and his move- 
ments so rapid, that had Cuesta supported him 
Victor must have been crushed, before Sebastiani, 
Joseph or Soult could have come to his aid ; after 
defeating Victor, Wellington would have been able 
to deal with the others in detail, and the French 
must have evacuated Madrid. It was impossible to 
calculate what would have been the moral effect of 
such a blow. Wellington's critics forget how de- 
moralized and hampered the French army had at 



JOHN HO OK II AM FRERE. 135 

that time become, by their habits of plunder, by the 
divisions among their commanders, and above all 
by their experience of the hatred of the country 
people, and the consequent difficulty of communi- 
cating, and getting intelligence. 

" The aid Wellington expected from Cuesta and 
his army was nothing more than the Spaniards 
could have rendered under almost any other of their 
generals. It was a conviction of this that made me 
so anxious to have old Cuesta superseded, and to 
get Alberquerque appointed in his stead. I felt 
then, and am sure now, that had Romana or Alber- 
querque been in command in place of Cuesta, the 
whole character of the subsequent contest would 
have been altered." * * * " Cuesta was not 
lukewarm nor disaffected, but utterly worn out, 
and retaining little of his former character but his 
extraordinary obstinacy and self-will, and his con- 
tempt for all opinions and orders of the Supreme 
Junta. Yet in England it was one of the many 
faults charged against me, that I had pressed on the 
Junta the old man's removal." 1 

1 This estimate of Cuesta is very fully borne out by the 
ample details given in the Wellington Despatches. On 
the 13th June, 1809, Sir Arthur wrote to Mr. Frere : "The 
obstinacy of this old gentleman (Cuesta) is throwing out of 
our hands the finest game that any armies ever had." (Gur- 
wood, vol. iv. p. 394.) A month later (13th July) he wrote to 
Mr. Frere a curious account of his interview with the old 
Spanish general, who would not speak French, the language 
of the hated invader, while the young Englishman could not 
express himself fluently in Spanish. He notes the prevailing 
contempt which Cuesta evinced for the Junta, and the evi- 
dence that the Junta were afraid of Cuesta. (Ibid. p. 478.) 

For the time Wellington thought he had sufficiently se- 
cured the hearty co-operation of Cuesta's army, through the 
influence of the Spanish adjutant-general. But this hope 
proved fallacious ; for he complains (p. 488) that the treat- 
ment of his army by the Spaniards was worse than if they 
had been in an enemy's country. And soon after (24th July), 
just before the battle of Talavera, he wrote to Mr. Frere : 



136 MEMOIR OF 

Of Alberquerque's natural capacity as a general 
Mr. Frere always expressed a very high opinion. 
" Had he lived and been continued in command in 



" Cuesta more and more impracticable every day. It is im- 
possible to do business with him, and very uncertain that 
any operation will succeed in which he has any concern." 
(Ibid. p. 498.) It was by this time apparent that Cuesta's 
own army had become quite tired of him. 

To Lord Castlereagh Wellington wrote (1st August), a few 
days after the battle : " I certainly could get the better of 
everything if I could manage General Cuesta ; but his temper 
and disposition are so bad that that is impossible." (Ibid. 

P- 523)- 

Southey says, " The necessity of removing Cuesta from the 
command, appeared so urgent to Mr. Frere, that he deemed 
it his duty to present a memorial on the subject, though 
Marquis Wellesley was expected two days afterwards (August 
9th) at Seville." Having detailed the evils consequent on 
Cuesta's neglects and omissions, he urged the appointment 
of another commander, " either the choice being left to Sir 
Arthur, or the Junta itself appointing the Duke of Alber- 
querque, who possessed his confidence, and that of the army ; 
and whose abilities had been tried and approved." * * " This 
was the last act of Mr. Frere in his public capacity ; and it 
was consistent with the whole conduct of that Minister, who, 
during his mission, never shrunk from any responsibility, nor 
ever, for the fear of it, omitted any effort which he thought 
requisite for the common welfare of his own country and of 
Spain." Southey remarks, that the presentation of this me- 
morial, at such a moment, might seem irregular in a public 
point of view, and, in a private one, might alter the feelings 
with which Mr. Frere would wish to take leave of many 
friends in Spain. But in addition to the urgency of the case, 
he considered it would be peculiarly unpleasant for Lord 
Wellesley to begin his mission with a discussion in which his 
brother was concerned. In fact, the Marquis did not, on his 
arrival, think it necessary to follow up the memorial by in- 
sisting on Cuesta's removal, and limited his interference to a 
strong expression of his own sense of Cuesta's misconduct. 
A few days later, after further communication with the Junta 
and his brother, he came round to Mr. Frere's view, and pre- 
sented a note, which enforced his predecessor's suggestion. 
But, in the meantime, a paralytic stroke had rendered Cuesta 
physically incapable of command, and he had resigned. — 
Southey, vol. II. chap. xxx. pp. 456-8. 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 137 

the field, he would have effected a great deal. He 
had not Romana's education or experience, nor 
would he, on the whole, have been as good a general- 
in-chief — but he had great courage and energy, and 
his high rank and popularity would have enabled 
him to do many things no one else could have 
attempted. He had the reputation too of being 
extremely lucky, which goes a great way with the 
common people in Spain and every where else. He 
thoroughly understood his soldiers, and could make 
them do anything for him, and especially he could 
make use of their extraordinary powers of endurance 
and marching, for which, the Spaniards have been 
famous since the time of the Carthaginians. 
Nothing could have better shown what he could do 
with such troops as he had than his march to cover 
Cadiz when threatened by Mortier. Alberquerque 
marched from near Cordova to Cadiz, with 8000 
infantry and artillery, as well as cavalry, more than 
260 miles in eight days, and saved Cadiz. It was 
after I had been relieved, but I was at Cadiz at the 
time. I was so surprised, when a man brought the 
news of Alberquerque's approach, that I could not 
believe it till the man told me he had spoken to 
the Duke and given him a light for his cigar, and 
described him so minutely that I felt sure he had 
seen Alberquerque." * * " He had in perfection 
some of the faculties in which Cuesta and all the 
old generals were most deficient, and had he com- 
manded earlier, and been better supported, he would 
have given Wellington exactly the kind of aid he 
needed, and the war might have been materially 
shortened ; but after I left, Lord Wellesley did not 
know his value till too late, and did not support 
him as he should have done. The Junta were 
always jealous of him, and anxious to get rid of 
him, so they sent him to England as Ambassador, 
by way of an honourable exile, and he afterwards 
died of vexation and a broken heart." 



138 MEMOIR OF 

Of Romana, Mr. Frere had, on the whole, a. 
higher opinion than of any of the Spanish generals ; 
and, making every allowance for their early and 
intimate friendship, Romana's career justified his 
estimate, which was in the end fully confirmed by 
the judgment of Wellington. 

The following letters are given, as illustrating the 
character of the intercourse Mr. Frere kept up, and 
the manner in which he endeavoured to support the 
Spanish General. 1 

After Soult had been driven by Sir Arthur Wel- 
lesley from Oporto into the mountains of Gallicia, 
in May, 1809, Romana, having disposed the forces 
under his immediate command to harass and watch 
the French, paid a flying visit to Asturias, for the 
purpose of rousing that province to a better use 
than had been previously made of their resources. 
Finding the Junta both inefficient and corrupt, he 
used his authority as Captain-General to suppress 
them, and nominated a fresh Junta, composed of 
men of greater energy, and undoubted devotion to 
the national cause. 2 The measure seems to have 
been wise and necessary ; but, under the pressure 
of more urgent calls on his attention, Romana ne- 
glected to justify or even report it to the Supreme 
Central Junta. 

This omission gave great offence to that body, 
and led to Mr. Frere addressing the following letter 
to Romana : — 

" Seville, Ju?ie tfh, 1809. 

" My dear Romana, 

" I HAVE for a long time deferred writing to 
you upon a subject which is very disagreeable to 

1 The limits of a slight biographical sketch do not admit 
of the insertion of Mr. Frere's longer and more important 
despatches, which have been already published. 

2 See Southey, vol. ii. chap. xxii. p. 322, ed. 1827, for a full 
account of the romantic incidents of this visit of Romana to 
Asturias, and of its causes and results. 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 139 

me to mention ; but which I cannot, I think, any 
longer delay, without being wanting in that friend- 
ship with which you have honoured me ; but I can- 
not conceal from you, that the effect which has been 
produced by the interruption of your correspond- 
ence, has been extremely unfavourable. 

" If you wish to remain upon fair terms with the 
Junta, and not to be understood as treating them 
with voluntary disrespect, it will be necessary to 
send a complete and most careful explanation of 
your motives for suppressing the Junta of Asturias, 
in which I have not the least doubt that you were 
right, and I have lost no opportunity of saying so. 
But when it is merely objected, that whatever might 
have been the necessity for suppressing an ancient 
constituted body, that necessity ought to have been 
made evident to the Government at least after the 
measure was taken, I feel myself at a loss for an 
answer. The expression of their being a Junta 
nominated by intrigue, has given great offence to 
their countrymen here, and will require particularly 
to be accounted for, or qualified. 

" It will be necessary likewise to enter into a 
general review of your military operations since 
your return to Asturias, and their motives. That 
you must have had great difficulties to encounter 
cannot be doubted ; but while this is only known 
or felt in general, and without any knowledge of 
the particulars, it must lead to a very false esti- 
mate of your merits, while the Asturians are exag- 
gerating the means which they say they are ready 
to put at your disposal. 

" I have not the least idea that they could have 
given you two regiments in a state fit to leave the 
province ; but, till this is explained and made evi- 
dent, people here will think that you had nothing 
to do but to march into Gallicia with the force which 
was offered you, and destroy General Ney." 

Mr. Frere then refers to his own recall, and pro- 
ceeds : — 



Ho MEMOIR OF 

"You will undoubtedly have heard from Eng- 
land, that General Moore's business has ended in 
my recall. I cannot deny that I feel it very sen- 
sibly, though I knew at the time that I ran the risk, 
and exposed myself to it voluntarily." 

He speaks of his own determination, "at any rate, 
and by any means," to urge Moore to what appeared 
to him to be the duty of a general in command of 
such an army, and adds : — 

" This is among the other reasons which induce 
me to write to you. My successor is immediately 
expected. He is a man of talents, but cannot be 
expected to feel for you the same interest as your 
very faithful and sincere — J. H. Frere." 1 

On the eve of quitting office, and after his suc- 
cessor had arrived at Cadiz, Mr. Frere, feeling how 
necessary to Romana would be the support he had 
always received from the British representative, 
addressed the following letter to Lord Wellesley, 
inclosing a copy of a note which he had addressed 
to the Supreme Junta regarding Romana's services, 
and the mode in which they might be made of most 
avail to the common cause. 

" Private." " August 8t/i, [i 809]. 

" My dear Lord, 

" You will have seen from my last dispatch 
the situation of the M. Romana, against whom the 
Asturians have been driving a most furious intrigue, 
which has been assisted by the total want of atten- 
tion to correspondence on his part ; the consequence 



1 Lord Russell, then a very young man travelling in Spain 
with Lord and Lady Holland, lived for some time with Mr. 
Frere at Seville. He told me that Romana, who was also 
living in the house, would often join Mr. Frere in the after- 
noon, and the two friends would set out without their hats 
whilst waiting for dinner, and sometimes ramble so far ab- 
sorbed in their conversation that they forgot the dinner and 
the other guests waiting for it. 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 141 

was, that a general idea prevailed here that his 
faculties were impaired ; and so universal was the 
consent upon this point, that I hardly felt myself 
authorized to stand out against it, when the deter- 
mination was taken by the Junta to recall him. 

" These ideas have since vanished, and I accord- 
ingly directed a note to Mr. Garay. 

" I would not, however, communicate it to him 
(the Marquis Romana), having nothing but conjec- 
ture as to the sentiments of the Government at 
home, and being in expectation of your almost 
immediate arrival by every dispatch that I received ; 
and being apprehensive that those sentiments might 
not be in unison with the conduct which he may 
probably hold, and which is insinuated at the end 
of my dispatch (I think No. 93). But if Govern- 
ment are disposed to continue to him their support, 
I think that no time should be lost in informing 
him of the interest which is taken by them in his 
situation, and I would in that case forward my note 
to him." 

Romana had shortly before this been summoned 
to take a seat in the Supreme Central Junta at 
Seville. The promotion was ostensibly an honour- 
able recognition of his great services ; but he re- 
garded it, with feelings which the event seemed to 
justify, as a mistake to remove him, at such a mo- 
ment, from the province where he had so well 
organized the most effective form of national resist- 
ance to the invader. In a touching and spirit- 
stirring general order,' he took leave of the com- 
panions-in-arms many of whom had followed him 
in his escape from Denmark. At Seville he soon 
found fresh proof of the utter incompetence of a 
body constituted as the Junta was, to rule Spain at 
such a juncture ; but it was not easy under the cir- 
cumstances to devise a better form of government. 
Many plans were discussed, and Romana submitted 
to his colleagues a note, strongly advocating, on 



142 MEMOIR OF 

constitutional grounds, as well as on considerations 
of present expediency and general policy, an entire 
change in the form and machinery of administra- 
tion ; so that the Government should represent 
more distinctly a regency acting for the lawful 
Sovereign and for the Cortes, as, by ancient right, 
the representatives of all estates in the realm. 1 

It is apparently in reply to a letter from Mr. 
Frere, forwarding a copy of this note, which he had 
received from Romana, that Lord Wellesley several 
weeks afterwards wrote to the former : 

"Private." "Seville, Oct. 17th, 1809. 

" My dear Sir, 

" I RETURN the Marquis de la Romana's 
note, with many thanks to you for this very inter- 
esting communication. 

" I request you to express to him my particular 
gratitude for the perusal. of a paper containing so 
much real wisdom and public spirit, conveyed in 
the most powerful and eloquent language. 

" The general sentiments and ideas expressed by 
M. de la Romana are entirely conformable to my 
opinions, and I sincerely hope that he will urge, 
with his characteristic energy, the instantaneous 
accomplishment of the two great objects of his pro- 
posal — the appointment of a Council of Regency, 
and the proclamation of a fixed and early day for 
the assembly of the Cortes. 

" In some of the details of his plan, I should per- 
haps differ with him, and I should certainly be 
disinclined to insist on any point of the detail, or of 
mere theoretical perfection, which might delay the 
concentration of the executive power, or the meet- 
ing of a regular representation of the estates of the 
realm. 

1 The substance of the note is given by Southey, vol. II. 
chap. xxv. p. 492. 



JOHN HO OKU AM FRERE. 143 

" In one point, however, I agree completely with 
M. de la Romana, in the absolute necessity of 
rendering the executive power, now to be formed, 
as exact an image as can be constituted, of the legi- 
timate sovereignty of the absent King. 

" Its form, constitution, character, and even its 
name, should be so framed as to recall to the nation 
the actual existence of the lawful monarch — a cir- 
cumstance which the present Government is ill cal- 
culated to preserve in the memory of the people. 

" The Marquis de la Romana's note is so admir- 
able in many respects, that I should be much 
obliged to him for a copy of it, with permission to 
translate, and to lay it before His Britannic Majesty, 
who would not fail to approve a composition which 
unites such animating sentiments of loyalty and 
freedom. 

" Believe me to be, with great esteem, dear sir, 
your faithful servant, Wellesley." 1 

1 When this letter was written, Lord Wellesley was on the 
eve of returning to England, and nothing effectual was done 
to improve the constitution of the body which represented the 
central authority of the Spanish Government. Shortly after- 
wards, in January, 1810, when the incompetence of the Junta 
had brought the enemy to the gates of Cadiz, Romana was 
nominated to command the army in Estramadura. After 
rendering important service by securing Badajos against be- 
ing surprised by the French, he, with very inadequate means, 
made effectual head against them for several months in his 
own province, whilst Wellington was maturing his plans and 
organizing his troops for the defence of the lines of Torres 
Vedras. After Wellington retired within the lines, at the 
end of 1 8 10, Romana joined him with 6000 men of the Estra- 
maduran army. When Massena was forced to retreat, and 
Wellington issued from his lines to follow up his baffled op- 
ponent, it was arranged that Romana should employ his 
troops on the enemy's flank. He was to have set out the next 
day to rejoin his army, which had re-crossed the Tagus, with 
a view to keep open communication with the rich corn coun- 
try of Alemtejo and Badajos, when he was seized with a heart 
complaint, and died suddenly at Cartano on the 23rd of Jan- 
uary, 181 1. Wellington had learnt thoroughly to appreciate 



144 - MEMOIR OF 

Mr. Frere used to refer to the bitter and most 
unjust opposition to Wellington, and especially to 
the clamour in Parliament, in the Common Council 
of the City of London, and by a portion of the 
press, against the grant of a peerage and pension 
to him, after the battle of Talavera, as striking 
proofs of the errors to which popular contemporary 
views and opinions are liable, and as illustrating the 
dangers of entrusting executive power to an assem- 
bly too exclusively composed of what are called 
"practical men." "They are apt," he said, "to 
undervalue or ignore the teachings of history, and 
always distrust any suggestion of that foresight 
which requires somewhat of the poetical faculty 
and imagination. If the ' practical men ' who were 
always inveighing against the war had had their 
way, Wellington would have been recalled, and 
Spain delivered over to France in 1810. The in- 
stinct of the English nation was right, as it often is, 
without knowing why ; but comparatively few men, 
in or out of Parliament, really understood why it 
was certain that in the long run the Spaniards must 
succeed if they persevered, and why it was wise 
and safe for England to support them to the ut- 
most. The greater part of the Whigs shut their 
eyes to the fact that the cause of the Spaniards was 
really the cause of national freedom and liberty. 
They were so charmed with the Revolution for de- 

the great qualities of the Spanish soldier under every form of 
trial ; and unused as he was to lavish praise, he recorded his 
sense of Romana's services in the following tribute to his 
memory : 

" In Romana the Spanish army have lost their brightest 
ornament, his country their most upright patriot, and the 
world the most strenuous and zealous defender of the cause 
in which we are engaged ; and I shall always acknowledge 
with gratitude the assistance which I received from him, as 
well by his operation as by his counsel, since he had been 
joined with this army." — Wellington Despatches, 26th Jan- 
uary, 181 1, vol. vii. p. 190. 



■ JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 145 

stroying absolute monarchy, that they continued to 
worship it after it had, as violent revolutions gene- 
rally do, erected another and a worse tyranny." 

In the revulsion of feeling consequent on Wel- 
lington's splendid successes in the last four years of 
the war, the very essential services of men like Sir 
Robert Wilson, Col. Trant, Sir Samuel Ford Whit- 
tingham, and of many individual Englishmen, as 
well as Spaniards, were in danger of being altoge- 
ther forgotten. Few officers suffered more from 
this forgetfulness than Sir Hew Dalrymple. Of 
him Mr. Frere said — "He had the rare merit of 
seeing from the first the real character and import- 
ance of the Spanish insurrection against Napoleon, 
and of always doing or advising the right thing to 
aid it. Yet he is chiefly remembered as if he had 
been responsible for stopping Wellington's career of 
victory by the convention of Cintra. Whereas the 
truth is, all the mischief was done before he arrived, 
and the convention was, as many excellent military 
judges believed, the best thing he could have done 
under the circumstances. However that may be, 
but for him the Spanish insurrection might have 
been nipped at the outset." 

The following memorandum expresses these views 
more fully : — 

" I consider Sir Hew Dalrymple to have been 
the most active agent in promoting the insurrection 
in the south of Spain. 

" Had not Castanos relied upon the promises of 
support given him by Sir Hew, it is much to be 
feared that he would not have moved from Alge- 
ziras, for he could by no means rely at that period 
either upon Pena or Morla. 

" Castanos had under his command 10,000 regular 
troops ; with them were incorporated at Utrera 
15,000 peasants ; the wJwle of the Spanish force at 
the Battle of Bay leu. 

"After the capitulation, 17,000 Frenchmen filed 
L 



146 MEMOIR OF 

through the ranks of the Spanish army, and laid 
down their arms. 

" The number of killed and wounded on the part 
of the French at the Battle of Baylen amounted to 
4,000. Dupont was therefore defeated, and obliged 
to capitulate, by a force very little superior in num- 
ber to his own, and three-fifths of which had only 
learned to load and fire a few days previous to the 
battle. 

" It should however never be forgotten that Sir 
Hew Dalrymple's enlightened view of the grand 
movement of the Spanish nation induced him, upon 
his own responsibility, to engage Castanos to take 
the field, in spite of the lukewarm support of his 
friends at Cadiz ; and that without the co-operation 
of Castanos, the Battle of Baylen could not have 
been fought, and the war would, in all probability, 
have been crushed in its infancy. 

" So important, however, and well-timed was the 
capitulation granted by Castanos to Dupont, that 
one battalion of Reding's force was actually sur- 
rounded and taken prisoners by Vedel, before 
Vedel was informed of the capitulation, and he was 
at last driven to agree to it by Dupont's threats." 

On his return to England, Mr. Frere found the posi- 
tion of parties materially changed, by the differences 
between Mr. Canning and Lord Castlereagh, which 
had ended in a duel, in the retirement of both from 
office, and in the complete breaking up of the Port- 
land ministry. Many years after, in reply to a 
question as to the original cause of the divergence 
of opinions which had ended so disastrously, Mr. 
Frere said : " Canning told me he had written me 
a very full account of the quarrel, and of all that 
led to it. It happened while I was in Spain ; and 
the letter was lost with the vessel which carried the 
mails. I have no doubt the cause was something 
of the same kind as occurred very often to me. 
For instance : it was a great object for us to occupy 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 147 

Cadiz j 1 the difficulty was to overcome the jealousy 
of the Junta. I was working, by the aid of Garay, 
the secretary to the Junta, to get the proposition 
that an English garrison should be sent to occupy 
Cadiz, to come from the Junta themselves. We 
had so far succeeded, that I had every reason to 
believe that such a proposition would in a few days 
be made to me ; when, without any warning, I got 
a despatch from Lord Castlereagh (who was then 
Secretary at War), telling me that he had sent an 
agent of his own to arrange for the landing of an 
English force, and desiring me to assist him. This, 
as far as I could learn, was without any previous 
communication with the Foreign Office, or any 
notice to me. The jealousy of the Junta was 
instantly aroused, and it was with the greatest 
difficulty I pacified them, pointing out what had 
happened with Madeira, which had been occupied 
while I was at Lisbon by an English force, to pre- 
vent its falling into the hands of the French, with- 
out previous notice sent to Portugal ; but it was, 
at the time I spoke, again safe in the hands of the 
Portuguese. I have no doubt things of this kind 
were of constant occurrence. This want of fore- 
thought, and of consideration for his colleagues in 
the Cabinet, was of Course very galling to a man of 
Canning's temperament." .... Of Lord Castle- 
reagh, he added : " When he got among the 
princes and sovereigns at the Congress, to settle 
Europe after the war, he thought he could not be 
too fine and complaisant ; the consequence was, 
the sacrifice of many points on which we ought 
and might easily have insisted. The first thing I 
heard of his doing at the Congress made me feel 
that he was not up to the work. It was some 
arrangement which he had much at heart for some 
accession of territory to Hanover. This satisfied 

1 Vide ante, p. 126. 



148 MEMOIR OF 

me that he did not understand his position, for it 
was in direct opposition to what our Government 
had always declared to be our own intentions with 
regard to Hanover. The surrender of Java was 
another instance of great interests of our own 
sacrificed to a wish to please other potentates at 
the Congress. It did not seem to me that he ever 
clearly saw what of real good had resulted in 
various ways from the convulsions consequent on 
the Revolution, and the long war ; and how much 
there was in the former state of things which it was 
by no means desirable to restore. Where, for 
instance, was the necessity for picking up the poor 
old Pope and all the little Italian princes out of the 
mire, and brushing them, and setting them up 
again ? It only turned good men into Carbonari." 
With his mission to Spain Mr. Frere's active 
political career ended, and his subsequent life of 
comparative retirement is marked by few events. 
His father had died in 1807, leaving him landed 
estates in the eastern counties, the management of 
which afforded him for a time ample occupation and 
amusement. A letter from his mother, written just 
after he set out on his second voyage to Spain, 
gives a glimpse of the home to which she was pre- 
pared to welcome him on his return from his event- 
ful mission. 

" October zxst, 1808. 

"My Dear Son, 

" The letter I received from Bartle con- 
taining the account of your safe arrival at Corunna, 
gave the greatest satisfaction to all your relations 
here, especially to me, who have listened to all the 
wind and stormy rain since you sailed with much 
fear, mixed with a little hope that you might have 
escaped from them. We had continual accounts 
of wrecks, but I had no idea of having more than 
two sons exposed to that danger till I received a 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 149 

scrap, in pencil writing, from Temple, 1 dated ' Com- 
merce,' Yarmouth Roads. You must have had a 
full gale in your favour to be only one day without 
seeing land between the English and Spanish coast, 
and it was no slight rolling of the vessel that would 
have had an uncomfortable effect on you, which 
Bartle says he felt in an inferior degree. I am 
truly thankful your perils from the sea for the 
present are ended. Temple hurried to London to 
catch a glimpse of you both, and was too late ; 
and with his voyage, disappointment, and journey, 
was more fatigued than ever I saw him before." 

After a chronicle of family news, she returns to 
business at Roydon, his country house in Norfolk, 
details the arrival of the boxes of books, pictures, 
and painted glass, which he had brought home 
after his first missions to Lisbon and Madrid, and 
her deliberations as to the particular windows in 
which he might think the painted glass could be 
put up to the best effect — then reverts to the 
account his brother had given of their landing at 
Corunna : 

" Your reception in Spain was both splendid and 
affectionate ; honourable to your country and to 
your former representation of it. I hope the close 
of your mission, whenever it happens, will be fully 
answerable to the commencement. Susan " [his 
sister] " is looking for me. As I cannot look at 
you, I will fold this up, for when your Aunt Fenn 
comes, whom I am expecting every minute, I must 
go instantly." 

At a less hurried moment she adds a — 



1 Her youngest son : born 1781 ; died 1859. Rector 
of Finningham, Roydon and Burston, and subsequently 
Speaker's Chaplain and Canon of Westminster. Like his 
brothers he was a tall striking-looking man, whence arose 
the name given him by his friends, " The Beauty of Holiness." 



ISO MEMOIR OF 

" P.S. — Write often. Tell Bartle we thank him 
for his letters. Answer the painted glass queries." — 

and ends with a quiet suggestion, such as becomes 
a good church-woman, even in the days when 
church restoration was little thought of : 

" N. B. — Is any of the glass designed for Roydon 
church ? " x 

A letter written by a lady who was staying at 
Roydon in 1813 describes him as "a very odd 
creature, but very good and very entertaining ;" 
getting up early in the morning to teach two little 
nephews grammar, taking one still smaller a walk, 
during which he completed teaching him his letters, 
and " spending an hour after dinner in reading to 
them the ballad of William of Cloudesley, which 
delighted them very much." 

One of their school books bears marks of a visit 
the same boys had just before paid him at East- 
bourne. Under a picture of a child gathering crabs, 
he had written : 

" By cruel uncles harassed and perplexed, 
First taught to read and to count figures next, 
His only pastime, when his task is o'er, 
Is picking Crabs and Sand-eels on the shore." 

1 His mother died in 1813. She lived a life of unobtrusive 
charity and good deeds in a quiet country home ; but her 
own poetical powers (for one or two short specimens of 
which vide pp. 6 — 9) were above the average of authoresses 
of that day, and her extensive reading, correct taste, 
and capacity for entering into all the literary and political 
pursuits of her children made her always their trusted 
friend and companion. When she felt her strength failing, 
she summoned to her bedside her eight children who were in 
England, and after talking calmly and cheerfully of that their 
last meeting on earth, "bade them go to. dinner, which she 
trusted they would enjoy, and never to let their sorrow for 
her make them neglect their own health ; and she promised 
she would send them down a toast," after the fashion of the 
day. This she did in the words " Our union ;" which, in 
memory of the occurrence, and in accordance with her wishes, 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 151 

There are many passages in his writings which 
show how well Mr. Frere could appreciate the 
characteristic features of such East Anglian scenery 
as Crabbe and Bloomfield have described, and 
Crome and Constable have painted. The lines 
headed "Modern Improvements," 1 which Byron 
admired as a fragment of " real English landscape 
painting," were inspired by some rough unimproved 
fields, near the Hall at Roydon. The " Journey to 
Hardingham" is a versification of an actual reverie 
on a wintry ride to visit his friend Whiter, and his 
imitation of " Quid tibi visa Chios," describes the 
scenes and thoughts of his everyday life at Roydon. 
But while not insensible to the charms of the coun- 
try, his favourite pursuits and early friendships all 
conspired to draw him to the capital. In London 
society his polished wit and playful fancy, his varied 
learning and great powers of conversation, joined 
to the easy courtesy of a travelled English gentle- 
man of the old school, made him everywhere a 
welcome guest. He had many qualifications for the 
highest success in almost any branch of literature, 
but he wanted the stimulus of ambition or of 
necessity to write, whilst his extreme fastidiousness 
disinclined him to regard anything he composed as 
finished, and his wonderfully accurate and retentive 
memory tempted him to avoid the mechanical 



her youngest son Temple afterwards had engraved as the 
motto on signet rings, bearing the device of the seals which 
Walton tells us were given by Dr. Donne " to many of his 
friends" — a Cross as the stock of the Anchor of Hope. 

1 The same feeling which runs through " Modern Improve- 
ments" is more tersely expressed in the following lines, 
scratched by Mr. Frere with a diamond on a dressing-room 
window in the east turret of Holland House, in 181 1. They 
are now hung up as a souvenir in one of the boudoirs : 
" May neither Fire destroy, nor Waste impair, 
Nor Time consume thee, till the twentieth heir : 
May Taste respect thee, and may Fashion spare." 



152 MEMOIR OF 

labour of noting down either his thoughts or the 
results of his reading. 

For this he paid a penalty, which is more or less 
rigorously exacted from all who prefer the pleasures 
of living society to the task of writing for the future. 
The most characteristic and valuable results of his 
reading and thinking were lost in every-day use ; 
what little remains owes its preservation to con- 
temporary friends, and the care of their biographers, 
who have noted a few of the sayings and anecdotes 
which survived in the memory of his companions 
long after Mr. Frere had ceased to be among them. 

Such are the anecdotes preserved by Moore, in 
his faithful record of the meetings at which he was 
the petted guest of those who, a generation ago, 
gathered round them all that was distinguished for 
literary or political ability in London. 

At one time he is pleased with Frere's comparison 
of O'Connell's eloquence to the "aerial potato" 
described by Darwin in his " Phytologia," and with 
his severe criticism on Erskine's verses, "The Muses 
and Graces will just make a jury." Another time 
he refers to " Frere's beautiful saying that ' next to 
an old friend, the best thing is an old enemy,' " and 

again he relates how " Madame de having said 

in her intense style, ' I should like to be married in 
English, in a language in which vows are so faith- 
fully kept,' some one asked Frere ' What language, 
I wonder, was she married in ? ' ' Broken English, 
I suppose,' answered Frere." 1 

Canning and Frere being invited by a clerical 
friend to come and hear his first sermon, asked them 
afterwards how they had liked it ? Canning, to 
avoid saying it was uninteresting, promptly replied, 
"I thought it rather — short." "Ah," said the com- 

1 " Life, Letters, and Journals of Thomas Moore," edited by- 
Lord John Russell, vol. iv. p. 302 ; vol. v. p. 102 ; vol. vi. 
P. 345- 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 153 

poser, " I am aware that it was short, but I was 
afraid, if I made it longer, of being tedious." He 
paused for an answer. " But you were tedious," 
replied Frere sotto voce. 

One night he had returned to Holland House to 
supper, with Lord and Lady Holland, after the 
play. They found that Mr. Shuttleworth 1 had 
already retired to rest. Whilst at supper they were 
disturbed by strange unearthly sounds at regular 
intervals, concerning the origin of which Frere ex- 
pressed some curiosity. " Oh ! it's only Shuttle- 
worth snoring," said Lord Holland. " Ah," said 
Frere, "now I understand. He has not got that 
large nose for nothing." 

The list might be enlarged by references to the 
works or memoirs of Scott, Byron, Southey, Gifford, 
Rose, Coleridge, Moore, Windham, Rogers, and 
others of his literary or political friends ; but except 
occasionally in the case of a careful chronicler like 
Moore, the wit or the wisdom which charmed are 
generally only to be inferred from the impression 
noted as produced on the hearer. 

His letters, on the most trivial incidents of every 
day life, bear the impress of the same qualities 
which at all times lent a peculiar grace to his con- 
versation. From the nature of the topics it is not 
easy to select what would give to the general reader 
a fair idea of the charm they had for the intimate 
friends to whom they were addressed. 

A few extracts may, however, serve as specimens. 
The first is to his brother Bartle, who after serving 
with him for some years, and repeatedly acting as 
Envoy in Portugal and Spain, had been sent as 
Secretary of Legation to Constantinople. 



1 Rev. Ph. Shuttleworth, " a good scholar and most amiable 
man," tutor to the late Lord Holland, and subsequently Bishop 
of Chichester. The story is also told of Mr. Allen — but I am 
informed on undoubted authority that this was incorrect. 



154 MEMOIR OF 

" Roydon, March 27th, 1812. 

" My Dear Bartle, 

"Though I am not well to-day, and my 
views of things partake of the sort of physical 
anguish I feel, which I attribute to having sauntered 
about yesterday in the wind and sun with William, 
yet as to-morrow is not post-day, and my letter, 
though it does not enliven you, will show at least 
that I have not begun to forget you, I would not 
omit writing while Mam, William, and George were 
all employed in the same way. It will be no satis- 
faction, I believe, to you to know that your going 
makes me very melancholy ; but I am still fully 
convinced that it was the only thing for you to do, 
and I think that you can never repent of having 
done so, and might very much of having refused it. 
After all, it will not be an unpleasant circumstance 
in your life to have seen those same Turks, of 
whom I would endeavour to know everything 
that could be known, and that my opportunities 
of leisure would allow me to learn. This cannot 
but be creditable, and may be very advantageous 
to you, let alone the satisfaction of one's own 
curiosity in the history and modes of thinking of so 
singular a race ; I would, therefore, if possible, 
acquire the language, or, at least, as much of it as I 
could. I propose, in return, to task myself to write 
you long letters of what is going on here, such as if 
you think them worth keeping, which I hope you 
will, it may be a satisfaction to me, and perhaps at 
a more distant time to others, to look over. Above 
all, believe me, dear Bartle, ever affectionately 
yours, J. H. Frere." 

" If you have any commission for books or any- 
thing else to be sent after you, I will look to it." 
"Blake's Hotel, May 10th, 1812. 

" My Dear Bartle, 

" Mr. Meyer, Secretary to the Commission 
to Malta, and a student of this Hotel, has sent his 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 155 

name to me very civilly, with an offer to take any 
letter or commission for you. Accordingly, I think 
it a good and safe opportunity for forwarding 
Birch's recipe with my compliments to the part 
affected. If it were not Sunday, I would get over 
the repugnance which I have felt hitherto in pre- 
senting myself as a customer at Mr. Weis's magazine, 
and dispatch the artillery by the same conveyance. 
Mr. Meyer is going within an hour or two, and there- 
fore I will only set down, summatim, the history of 
the family since your departure. William [his 
brother, Sergeant Frere,] was made Master of 
Downing 1 on Friday last, by the votes of the two 

Archbishops and old T ; the two first procured 

by his own merits, and the third by H , who 

had been himself a candidate, but seeing no chance 
of success, chose to secure it to William instead of 
leaving a doubtful election, which, as it might have 
left the business to the Chancellor, would in that 
case have been a decision in favour of his old anti- 
pathy, C . Little D has been in town, and 

has been very strenuous and acute in the business, 
as he himself seems to allow. I have just this 
moment written a note to him to return me ' Childe 
Harold,' which I had lent him, and which I wish 

to send you. His (not D 's, but Lord Byron's) 

love is Mrs. , as appears by the passage in which 

he mentions her having been born at Constantinople, 
and expresses the pleasure which arises from the 
reflection that the spot in which we are, has been 
before visited by other friends. 

" Having just recovered from a fit of coughing, I 
will only say that William will not feel himself 
obliged to give up the law, and will continue to do 
as much business as he can get, and that the Col- 
lege in his hands will, I really think, be an orna- 
ment and an advantage to the University, instead 

1 Downing College, Cambridge. 



156 MEMOIR OF 

of being (as it would otherwise have been made) a 
nuisance and a job, and (what you would feel most) 
a Johnian job." 

Then after some family news : 

" As for myself, I am thus far advanced since I 
left you in my way for Roydon, after having a 

tete-a-tete in my way here with old Admiral B 

at Godalming. Before I set off I went to buy a 
book (to take with me in the chaise), and pitched 
upon a pocket Pope's Homer. This has since led 
me to look at the original of that celebrated work. 
The result of my enquiries is that the second book 
has nothing to do with the first, and that the cata- 
logue, together with the third and fourth books, at 
least, belong to some poem which related to the 
first events of the war. The author of the first 
book does not appear again distinctly till we see 
his Jupiter thundering against Nestor and Diomed. 
Such are my opinions, more amply detailed in a 
red book which I wish I could send you ; but if you 
partake of Lord Byron's feelings and would like ' to 
read what I have read,' I think you will agree with 
me. They begin to tell me that it is half-past 
twelve, and that Mr. Meyer was to set off at twelve. 
So adieu, my dear Bartle, and, believe me, ever 
affectionately yours, J. H. Frere." 

His unmarried sister, Susan, had made her home 
with him after their mother's death, and her letters 
to their absent brother at Constantinople form a 
very faithful chronicle of home doings. The diffi- 
culty and uncertainty of the communication during 
the last years of the great war may be judged of 
from the fact that letters every three or four weeks 
are spoken of as a " great luxury," though they 
took from two to five months in transit, and the 
later-written letters sometimes outstripped their 
predecessors by a month or two. Mr. Frere, in 
March, 1814, is described by his sister as joining 
her on a visit to their cousin, Lady Laurie, at Dover, 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 157 

and there entertaining them with some verses of 
" excellent nonsense," the recital of which is acci- 
dentally interrupted. The chronicle further records 
the departure of Louis XVIII. and the Duchesse 
d'Angouleme from Dover on the 24th April, 18 14, 
and the arrival of the allied sovereigns on the 6th 
June : " Not a prince, potentate, or hero can visit 
England without passing through Dover, and we 
are waked out of our sleep in the night by the con- 
cussion of the guns from the cliff above our house, 
for these great people have so inured themselves to 
hardships that they travel without respite, and their 
greatest indulgence seems to be a truss of straw to 
lie on when they stop to collect the train of their 
followers ; the Emperor would have no other bed 
at Mr. Fector's, and his sister the Grand Duchess 
desired not to have a bed but a sofa to sleep on. 
This trait, I find, raised them in the estimation of 
my lady's maid and the housekeeper to an order 
of beings much above the common race of mortals." 
She describes the emperor's " ingenuous benign ex- 
pression, and his look and personal together much 
like a good English country gentleman, who knows 
he is surrounded by people who respect him." The 
Grand Duchess as "pretty, like her brother, with a 
sweet expression." The Duke of Clarence had 
determined on escorting the imperial party across 
the Straits, but the Grand Duchess insisted on 
Admiral Foley providing her another ship. She 
had her little son, about four years old, with her, 
and Mr. Fector's little boy, rather younger, was in- 
vited to pay him a visit, which was most graciously 
received ; for, though his little Imperial Highness 
made light of a warning that " it was not right to 
stand on the hearthstone," he would not eat till his 
young guest was first served ; and when they were 
running about he stopped, and holding up his hands, 
went softly for a minute aside, and in. reply to a 
question, What he was doing ? replied, " He was 



158 MEMOIR OF 

begging of God that he would let that nice little 
boy live." There are also descriptions of " Bliicher 
shaking hands with everybody. The King of 
Prussia looking grave, dignified, with a handsome 
and agreeable countenance, though somewhat me- 
lancholy. Platoff bent with the fatigues he has 
gone through, and looking quite aged. The Duke 
of Wellington, who landed at five in the morning, 
and had at nine a levee of ladies to see him at 
breakfast, when they were most graciously received. 
The only unhappy-looking person of the party being 
the Prince of Orange (the unsuccessful suitor of the 
Princess Charlotte), who had come from London to 
meet the Duke." 

Mr. Frere had been to Portsmouth to the great 
naval review given to the allied sovereigns by the 
Prince Regent, "who ingratiated himself much with 
the naval officers, who had before all a strong im- 
pression of his being very unfavourably disposed 
towards them. The Prince said ' he had never 
known till then what a glorious thing the British 
Navy was, and that he should never be satisfied 
without having Naval aides-de-camp as well as Mili- 
tary.' " The promise, however, was not fulfilled till 
after his brother came to the throne. 

The following is from Mr. Frere to his sister, from 
Roydon : 

"August i^th, 1815. 
" My dear Susan, 

" I HAVE to thank you first for three letters. 

" Secondly, for certain lobsters which came very 
opportunely when I was wanting to mend my 
dinner for Mr. Carter. 

" Thirdly, for some picture frames, which are very 
handsome, and fit the pictures very exactly. 

" Lastly, I have to thank my cousin for recollect- 
ing that I should like to see Made. Suffrien's letter, 
which is indeed a very curious one, and shows 
that unless a Royalist party is formed quickly, 



JOHN HOOKHAM FEE RE. 159 

there will be only one party in the country, which 
will reduce it to a situation worse than that of Spain 
four years ago." 

Then after some amusing country gossip, and 
details of his every-day life, he adds : — 

" I am now thinking what I can do in return for 
the favours above enumerated. 

" First, this letter contains all that I could have 
had to tell you if I had written regularly in answer 
to yours, for it is all that has happened of any 
kind. 

" Secondly, I send you some apricots. 

"Thirdly, Mr. Bett's cart is agreeable to take 
your chair, which I send herewith. 

" Fourthly, I transmit half the remainder of the 
Stilton cheese, which I hope will meet with your 
favourable construction. 

" Fifthly, I return my cousin's letter with many 
thanks, and desire you to give my love to her, and 
to believe me, &c. 

" I must send back my cousin's carriage, and I 
believe when it goes I shall slip into it, but I have so 
mitcJi to do, as Mrs. B says." 

In one of his letters, when urged to " mention 
news, literature, or the ordinary topics of the day," 
to a relation who was suffering from the severest of 
domestic afflictions, and to whom he had just written 
several pages of grave, thoughtful, earnest reason- 
ing, he excused himself from attempting lighter 
topics by saying, " It would be too much like the 
story in St.-Simon of the old Abbe at Versailles, 
who finding a man in the forest with his leg 
broken, being unable to do anything better for him, 
stood by him and offered him pinches of snuff from 
his box." 

A letter written in the autumn of this year by his 
sister gives an amusing account of the party as- 
sembled at Roydon. The prospects of a secure 



160 MEMOIR OF 

and prolonged peace were supposed to promise a 
fall in the high rents of war time. Lady Laurie, 
the " cousin " of the letter just quoted, had been 
suggesting various household reforms, and Mr. 
Frere, his sister says, had gone to London and 
"amused himself just as he was going in contriving 
retrenchments of expense, in the prospect of having 
large deductions of receipts the next rent day. I 
told him it would end in some nightly visitation of 
the Muse ; and accordingly, one morning were pro- 
duced some verses, which I saved to divert you 
with, though the fragment will never be finished, 
and my cousin's occupations of making wines and 
preserves, which were to have been immortalized, 
are not yet sung : — 

" In the old cupboard with the fluted key- 
To hoard the sugar and secure the tea ; 
To purchase groceries at a cheaper rate, 
To teach old liveries to outlive their date, 
To count the fowls, to cater for the hogs, 
To calculate the coals, to hoard the logs ; 
In yearly brewings to retrench the malt, 
To reckon and secure the pork in salt, 
By just restraint of economic law 
To curb the roaring oven's ravening maw, 
To watch the dairy's ever-varying ways 
With timid censure, or with temperate praise ; 
Nor seek to scrutinize the wondrous plan, 
Unfathomable by the mind of man, 
The mysteries of that secret sphere are known 
To female spirits, and to them alone. 

" And here end the verses, which are marred in the 
transcribing by some absence of mind caused by 
my cousin's discourse about the fog, which is com- 
ing by solemn approaches up to our windows ; Mar- 
shal Ney's trial ; a round of beef that I am contriving 
how to pickle and send you, that you may have 
some use for that mustard pot she gave you ; and 
Patience herself, you know, when represented as 
tried to the utmost, has been described as seated 
upon such a throne, watching for the arrival of the 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 161 

desired round, and therefore we are uneasy at your 
being under so long and severe a trial, for we had 
no notion of the impossibility of getting good salt 
beef at Constantinople. These topics, and many 
others have been discussed whilst I am writing, and 
left me I do not know where in my letter." And 
then, after an ample family chronicle of the doings 
of distant branches, she ends with — " Here is a bul- 
letin that you will scarcely have patience to go 
through at once ; but, as a gentleman observed to 

Mrs. C , who proposed reading to him her own 

poem on the Battle of Waterloo, 'he would have it 
to read to himself, and take as much as he liked at 
a time.' " 

The letters dated 1816 contain numerous refer- 
ences to the agrarian disturbances which in the 
spring caused much alarm throughout the country. 
The details read much more like letters from a pro- 
claimed district in Ireland than the chronicles of 
quiet Norfolk and Suffolk villages. The poor had 
suffered greatly through the winter ; and though in 
parts wages had been raised in proportion to the rise 
in the price of wheat, "to id. more than the magis- 
trates' order," this had not been done generally, and 
the poorer people, " persuaded that there was some 
design to wrong them," were inclined to all sorts of 
outrages. There are daily records of barns and 
ricks fired, shrouds and threatening notices sent to 
obnoxious employers, and crowds of pauper la- 
bourers " parading the country with horns blowing 
and threats of violence." 

On the 1 2th of Sept. 18 16, Mr. Frere married 
Elizabeth Jemima, Dowager Countess of Erroll. 
At this time, and indeed throughout his life, his 
friends had many anecdotes of his habitual abstrac- 
tion of mind, when following out any absorbing 
train of thought. One of the best authenticated 
related that the late Mr. John Murray having for 
once relaxed his usual rule never to allow an author 

M 



162 MEMOIR OF 

to read or recite in the sanctum in Albemarle Street, 
got so interested in some verses which Mr. Frere 
was repeating and commenting on, that his dinner 
hour was at hand. He asked Mr. Frere to dine 
with him, and continue the discussion ; but the lat- 
ter, startled to find it was so late, excused himself 
on the plea that " he had been married that morn- 
ing, and had already overstayed the time when he 
had promised Lady Erroll to be ready for their 
journey into the country." Another story rested 
on Lady Erroll 's own authority, and related to 
their first acquaintance, some years before, when she 
was in the zenith of her beauty, as Cosway and Sir 
Martin Shee have painted her. Mr. Frere had just 
been introduced to her at an evening party, and 
offered to hand her down-stairs and procure some 
refreshment ; but getting much interested in con- 
versation by the way, became so engrossed in the 
train of thought he was pursuing, that he drank 
himself a glass of negus that he had procured for 
her, and then offered his arm to help her upstairs 
without any idea of their not having achieved the 
errand on which they came; and was only reminded 
of his mistake by her laughing remonstrance with 
him on his forgetfulness of her existence. " This," 
she added, " convinced me that my new acquaint- 
ance was at any rate very different from most of 
the young men around us !" 

Whatever foundation there may have been for such 
anecdotes, it is certain that long acquaintance deep- 
ened his admiration of her into a devoted attach- 
ment. Except in later years, from her failing 
health, there was little of earthly sorrow to cloud 
their married life, the character of which is aptly 
foreshadowed in the closing verses of the lines he 
addressed to her in the earlier years of his court- 
ship. To the charms of personal beauty and en- 
gaging manners she added those of deep and refined 
feeling ; and his reliance on her good sense and 



JOHN HOOK HAM FRERE. 163 

judgment is shown by constant reference in his 
letters to her fiat as decisive not only in questions 
of every-day life, but of literary taste and fitness. 

The first part of "The Monks and the Giants" was 
published by Mr. John Murray, in 1817, as the 
" Prospectus and Specimen of an intended National 
Work, by William and Robert Whistlecraft, of 
Stowmarkct, in Suffolk, 1 harness and collar makers, 
intended to comprise the most interesting particu- 
lars relating to King Arthur and his Round Table." 
A second part was subsequently sent to Mr. Murray, 
who published both together in 18 18, with the title 
of " The Monks and the Giants." ~ 

In this jeu d 'esprit, Mr. Frere revived 3 in English 
poetry the octave stanza of Pulci, Berni, and Casti, 
which has since been completely naturalized in our 
tongue. Men of letters were not slow to recognise 
the service thus rendered to English literature, and 
Italian scholars especially were delighted to see one 
of the most beautiful of their favourite metres suc- 
cessfully adopted in a language so different from 
the dialect in which it was first used. Its value 
was immediately recognized by Byron. He wrote 



1 A lady residing in that part of Suffolk amused her 
friends much, at the time of the publication, by making a pil- 
grimage to Stowmarket, for the purpose of seeing "those 
very intelligent Harness-makers." 

1 The late Lord Lansdowne, speaking on one occasion of 
Mr. Frere, to his nephew the Rev. Constantine Frere, said — 
"All his friends liked him all the more for his originality in 
everything" — and mentioned as an instance, that when he gave 
him a copy of " Whistlecraft," he did not formally present it, 
but, happening to be dining that night at Lansdowne House, 
said, as he got up to go away, " O, Lansdowne, where I 
left my hat and stick, in the hall, you'll find something, I 
think, you may like to see." " I looked," said Lord Lans- 
downe, " and found Whistlecraft." 

3 Fanshawe's " Lusiad," Fairfax's Tasso, Harrington's 
Ariosto, and other English works had previously been written 
in this metre. Vide " Notes and Queries" on this subject, — 
January 27th. T872. 



164 MEMOIR OF 

to Murray, from Venice, in October, 1 8 1 7, announc- 
ing " Beppo," and said, " I have written a poem of 
eighty-four octave stanzas, humorous, in or after 
the excellent manner of Whistlecraft (whom I take 
to be Frere)." And ten days later, " Mr. Whistle- 
craft has no greater admirer than myself. I have 
written a story in eighty-nine stanzas, in imitation 
of him, called ' Beppo.' " 1 

Mr. William Stewart Rose, himself one of the 
most elegant Italian scholars of his generation, 
thus addressed Mr. Frere two years afterwards — 

" O thou that hast revived in magic rhyme 
That lubber race, and turn'd them out, to turney 
And love after their way ; in after time 
To be acknowledged for our British Berni ; 
Oh send thy giants forth to good men's feasts, 
Keep them not close." 2 

And in 1837 Mr. Rose wrote, 3 "Lord Byron is 
usually considered as the naturalizer of this species 
of poetry, but he had seen Mr. Frere's work before 
the publication of ' Beppo.' He made this avowal to 
me at Venice ; and said he should have inscribed 
' Beppo ' to him that had served him as a model, if 
he had been sure it would not have been disagree- 
able. Supposing (as I conclude) that some passages 
in it might have offended him." 4 

Southey, writing to Landor, who was residing 

1 A few months later (March 26, 1818), again writing to 
Murray of " Beppo," he says, " The style is not English, it is 
Italian ; — Berni is the original of all; Whistlecraft was my 
immediate model." Further acquaintance with Italian litera- 
ture showed him Berni's obligations to his predecessors ; and 
on February 21st, 1820, writing of Pulci's Morgante Mag- 
giore, he said, " It is the parent, not only of Whistlecraft, but 
of all jocose Italian poetry." 

2 " The Court and Parliament of Beasts. Translated from 
Casti." London, 1819. 

3 " Rhymes." Brighton, 1837. 

4 See also Miss Cornwallis's account of her conversation 
with Mr. Frere on the subject in May, 1819. "Letters of C. 
F. Cornwallis." Triibner & Co. 1864, pp. 22 and 23. 



JOHN HOOKHAM FEE RE. 165 

abroad, in February, 1820, said, "A fashion of 
poetry has been imported which has had a great 
run, and is in a fair way of being worn out. It is 
of Italian growth — an adaptation of the manner of 
Pulci, Berni, and Ariosto in his sportive mode. 
Frere began it. What he produced was too good 
in itself, and too inoffensive, to become popular ; for 
it attacked nothing and nobody; and it had the fault 
of his Italian models, that the transition from what 
is serious to what is burlesque was capricious. 
Lord Byron immediately followed, first with his 
'Beppo,' which implied the profligacy of the writer, 
and lastly with his ' Don Juan,' which is a foul blot 
on the literature of his country, an act of high trea- 
son on English poetry. The manner has had a host 
of imitators." 

There are passages in the " Monks and Giants " 
of great poetical beauty, and it is full of the humour 
which twenty years before had been so effective in 
the pages of the "Anti-Jacobin." But it did not 
achieve the popularity which might have been 
expected from these circumstances, joined to the 
complete mastery of metre and delicate sense of 
rhythm which the versification evinced. This was 
due not only to the reasons mentioned by Southey, 
but because people generally looked in it for political 
satire, and were disappointed when they failed to 
discover the meaning which they fancied must be 
hid under every name and allusion. 

Among men of literary taste, the reception of the 
poem was sufficiently flattering to render it a matter 
of surprise to his friends that he never completed 
the continuation promised in the parts published, 
and of which he was known to have composed a 
great number of stanzas; these he would willingly 
recite to any appreciative listener, though he never 
wrote them down. Many years after (1844), in 
reply to a question as to the reason why he never 
completed the work, he said, " You cannot go on 



166 MEMOIR OF 

joking with people who won't be joked with. Most 
people who read it at the time it was published, 
would not take the work in any merely humorous 
sense ; they would imagine it was some political 
satire, and went on hunting for a political meaning ; 
so I thought it was no use offering my jokes to 
people who would not understand them. Even 
Mackintosh once said to me, ' Mr. Frere, I have had 
the pleasure of reading your "Monks and Giants" 
twice over,' and then he paused ; I saw what was in 
his mind, and could not help replying with a very 
mysterious look, ' And you could not discover its 
political meaning ?' Mackintosh said, 'Well, indeed, 
I could not make out the allegory ; ' to which I 
answered, still looking very mysterious, 'Well, I 
thought you would not.' 

" I wished to give an example of a kind of bur- 
lesque of which I do not think that any good 
specimen previously existed in our language. You 
know there are two kinds of burlesque, of both 
of which you have admirable examples in Don 
Quixote. There is the burlesque of imagination, 
such as you have in all the Don's fancies, as when 
he believes the wench in a country inn to be a 
princess, and treats her as one. Then there is the 
burlesque of ordinary rude uninstructed common 
sense, of which Sancho constantly affords examples, 
such as when he is planning what he will do with 
his subjects when he gets his island, and determines 
to sell them 'at an average.' Of the first kind of 
burlesque we have an almost perfect specimen in 
Pope's ' Rape of the Lock ;' but I did not know 
any good example in our language of the other 
species, and my first intention in the ' Monks and 
Giants ' was merely to give a specimen of the 
burlesque treatment of lofty and serious subjects 
by a thoroughly common, but not necessarily low- 
minded man — a Suffolk harness-maker. Of course 
it was not possible always to adhere to such a plan. 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 167 

and I have no doubt I did occasionally diverge into 
something which was more akin to one's own real 
feeling on the subjects which turned up, and thus 
misled my readers ; but for some time after the 
work was first published I was very fond of pursuing 
the idea, and used to finish a couple of stanzas 
every day. 

"Another thing which disinclined me to go on 
with the work was the sort of stigma which at first 
attached to the metre after the publication of ' Don 
Juan.' I had a sort of parental affection for the 
metre, and knew what it was capable of in English 
as well as in Italian. Byron took a great fancy to 
it, and used it in ' Beppo,' which was all very well, 
and so were parts of 'Don Juan,' but there were 
other parts of ' Don Juan ' which could hardly be 
read virginibus pncrisque, and there was such an 
outcry that if I had gone on writing in the same 
metre, and any one had misunderstood me, I should 
have been suspected of meaning something very 
improper." 

I asked him if he could remember any of the 
stanzas of the continuation, and he repeated a good 
many, of which I am sorry to say the following are 
all of which the notes have escaped shipwreck. 
They were from the description of Ascopart, a 
young giant, who having been found by the monks, 
forsaken by his companions, and powerless from a 
broken limb, is taken into the monastery, cured, 
baptized, and, as far as the good brethren were 
able, civilized and rendered " a useful member of 
society ;" though his giant nature perpetually breaks 
out in a manner which rather discomfits his re- 
verend instructors. As soon as he can get about, 
the monks lead him round the convent, and show 
him all the wonders of civilization. Some things 
he understands, others are an inexplicable puzzle. 
All the arrangements for storing and providing 
food are easily enough understood, but — 



168 MEMOIR OF 

" The mystery of the Turnspit in the Wheel 
He understood not but admired with zeal. 



" No longer he regrets his native groves, 
His wonted haunt and his accustom'd rill ; 

He views the bake-house, scullery, and stoves, 
And from the leathern jack delights to swill. 

He saw the baker putting in some loaves, 
And, being quick and eager in his will, 

He thrust him in, half-way, for an experiment — 

It was not malice, it was only merriment. 



" The monks had purchased for their chapel floor 
Some foreign marbles, squares, of white and black ; 

It lay where it was left, upon the shore, 
Till Ascopart convey'd i't, on his back, 

Through miry roads, eleven leagues and more, 
Poked, like backgammon men, into a sack ; 

Went to the wood and kill'd a brace of bears, 

Then drank six quarts of ale, and so to prayers. 

" Besides all this he mended their mill dam, 
Digging a trench to turn aside the flood ; 

And brought huge piles of wood to drive and ram, 
Jamm'd in with stones to make it sound and good. 

The story looks a little like a flam, 

But in five days he built five stacks of wood, 

To serve the convent for five winters' fire, 

As high as their own convent-church or higher. 

" But most he show'd the goodness of his heart 
In slaughtering swine and oxen for the year ; 

From dawn to sunset there was Ascopart, 

With sweat, and blood, and garbage in a smear. 

The butcher pointed out the rules of art — 
' I'll smite 'um,' quoth the Giant, ' never fear.' 

The clapper of the great old broken bell 

He bang'd about him with, and down they fell. 

" Pigs, when their throats were cut, amused him most- 
All cantering and curvetting in a ring ; 

To see them as they jostled and they cross'd, 
He swore it was a pastime for a king. — 

Laugh'd and laid wagers and cried out, ' ware post !' 
And as the monks were teaching him to sing, 

He criticized their squeaking, and found fault — 

' Come Pig ! now for a holding note in Alt.' 



JOHN HOOK HAM FRERE. 169 

" With such a size, and mass of limbs, and trunk, 
And his loins girded with a hempen string, 

He look'd, and might have been, a lordly monk ; 
Therefore I think it an unlucky thing 

That at their vespers he was always drunk, 
And that he never would be taught to sing, 

But only saunter'd from the kitchen fire, 

To howl and make a hubbub in the quire." 



" I put a good deal of this description of the 
young giant into Latin monkish verses. Here is 
one of them — 

" Notandum quod Asquibardus, Gigas et Paganus, 
Tres menses in ccenobio sejurnavit, 
Et gratam mentem monachis monstravit, 

Ad opera monasteria praestans manus ; 
Ad salinandum bestias mactavit ; 

Eodem die, viz. Novembris tredecem 

Comedit salsasorum ulnas sedecem. 

NOTA. " ' Campanae magna; funis tenet 

Dimidium ulnae minus,' says the margin ; 

A learned antiquary that had seen it 

Transcribed the passage for me, strictly charging 

That I should keep his secret — and I mean it ; 
His praises otherwise I should enlarge in — 

Encouraging and affording me facilities, 

In order to display my poor abilities." 

" I thought the feats of pig-killing, and of eating 
so many ells of sausages, were not bad achieve- 
ments for my harness-maker poet to admire in his 
gigantic hero." 

One of the events was the tossing of King Ryance 
in a blanket ; his tormentors of course sing a song, 
the chorus of which was to this effect : — 

" This is King Ryance of high degree, 
Who sent the defiance so saucily ; 
Give him a lift, a turn, and a shift, 
And a flight in the air, hurra ! hurra !" 

In a letter to his brother Bartle, dated May 24th, 
18 1 8, he wrote regarding the publication of the 
second part of the poem : — 



170 MEMOIR OF 

" My Lady 1 is very anxious to have it published 
and very peremptory. My own impulse and reso- 
lution was to leave the thing unpublished, at least 
for the present. 

" In my notion, a mere jeti d' esprit, such as the first, 
is pardonable if good judges think it good, even if 
the populace should not like it, and if the poem 
were a serious one there would be no harm in go- 
ing on for the sake of the good judges before men- 
tioned ; but to persevere in a nonsensical work 
merely for the sake of the good judges of nonsense 
is a different business. Besides that, people are 
always ready to say that a continuation is not so 
good as the first part. I wish you would look it 
over to see whether there is any room for such an 
observation." 

Fortunately his brother's judgment concurred 
with Lady Erroll's ; and the second part, which 
contains some of the best passages in the poem, 
was not lost. The following recent criticism by a 
distinguished American scholar may be quoted, as 
showing that something more than personal friend- 
ship or the fashion of the day actuated his contem- 
poraries in the estimate they formed of the work at 
its first appearance : — 

" There are few books of its size which contain as 
much genuine wit, humour, and fancy, or which dis- 
play greater skill in the management of both light 
and serious verse, or indicate fuller resources of cul- 
ture. It is a fresh and unique jeu d' esprit, which 
exhibits a quality of cleverness as rare as it is amus- 
ing. The form and method of the poem, the struc- 
ture of its verse, its swift transitions from sprightly 
humour to serious description or reflection, its 
mingling of exaggeration with sober sense, its 
heroi-comic vein, are all derived from the famous 
Italian romantic poems, especially from the Mor- 

1 Lady Erroll. 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 171 

gante Maggiore of Pulci, and in a less degree from 
the Animali Parlanti of Casti. It has no moral 
object, and does not confine itself to a single con- 
tinuous narrative, but is a simple work of amuse- 
ment, free in its course, according to the whim and 
fancy of the writer. It is the overflow of an abun- 
dant and lively spirit, restrained only by the limits 
imposed by a fine sense of the proprieties of humour, 
and a thorough acquaintance with the rules of art. 
Its execution displays a command of style so com- 
plete in its way that it may be called perfect. The 
imaginary authors, the Whistlecrafts, appear in the 
poem only as giving a natural propriety to some of 
its simplicities of diction, and humorous absurdities 
of digression. Frere created the fiction of the 'har- 
ness and collar makers ' simply to gain a freer swing 
for his mirth, and is at no pains to preserve an abso- 
lute consistency of tone. The bland conceit of the 
pretended illiterate poet and prosaic tradesman add 
point to the keen wit and delicate appreciation and 
expression of one of the finest of literary masters, 
of a scholar who quotes ^Eschylus, transcribes pro- 
fessed rhyming Latin monkish chronicles, explains 
the fable of Orpheus, and on every page shows — 

" ' Traces of learning and superior reading.' " 

Speaking of the third and fourth cantos, the re- 
viewer says : " The same qualities of style distin- 
guish them, — the easy flow, of verse, the perfect 
command of natural language, the control of rhyme 
(the poet never seeming to be mastered, as Pulci 
and Berni often are, by the difficulties of the line), 
the rapid transitions, the playful humour, the happy 
strokes of satire, the characteristic delineation of per- 
sonages, and the charming descriptions of scenery, 
display the genius of the author in even fuller mea- 
sure than it is shown in the earlier episode of this 

delightful poem And thus ends one 

of the most playful, humorous, and original poems 



172 MEMOIR OF 

in English, a perfect success in its kind, and that, 
kind one of the rarest and most difficult." 1 He 
then quotes Miss Cornwallis' account of her con- 
versation with Mr. Frere on the comparative merits 
of" Beppo " and " Whistlecraft," and Coleridge's pre- 
ference for the superior metrical skill of the latter 
poem, as shown in the greater ease and rapidity of 
the verse. 2 

Byron's own opinion of Mr. Frere's taste and judg- 
ment is shown by his desiring Mr. Hobhouse to 
send the first canto of " Don Juan " to him, and to 
consult him, with Mr. Stewart Rose and Moore, as 
to the propriety of publishing it. The incidents of 
this interview are thus described by Moore : 3 

" Met Hobhouse. . . . Asked him had I any 
chance of a glimpse at ' Don Juan ' ? and then 
found that Byron had desired it might be referred 
to my decision ; the three persons whom he had bid 
Hobhouse consult as to the propriety of publishing 
it being Hookham Frere, Stewart Rose, and my- 
self. Frere, as the only one of the three in town, 
had read it v and pronounced decidedly against the 
publication 

" Frere came in while I was at Lady D — 's ; was 
proceeding to talk to hini about our joint umpire- 
ship on Byron's poem, when he stopped me by a 
look, and we retired into the next room to speak 
over the subject. He said he did not wish the 
opinion he had pronounced to be known to any one 
except B. himself, lest B. should suppose he was 
taking merit to himself, among the righteous, for 
having been the means of preventing the publica- 
tion of the poem. Spoke of the disgust it would 
excite if published ; the attacks in it upon Lady B. ; 

1 Article on John Hookham Frere in the " North American 
Review," for July, 1868, by Mr. C. E. Norton. 

s " Moore's Diary," April, 1823, vol. iv. p. 51. 

3 " Moore's Journals and Conversations," vol. ii. p. 263, 
30th January, 1 8 19. 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 173 

and said, ' it is strange, too, he should think there 
is any connection between patriotism and profli- 
gacy. If we had a very Puritan court indeed, one 
can understand then profligacy being adopted as 
a badge of opposition to it ; but the reverse being 
the case, there is not even that excuse for connect- 
ing dissoluteness with patriotism, which, on the 
contrary, ought always to be attended by the stern- 
est virtues.' 

"31st January. Went to breakfast with Hob- 
house, in order to read Lord Byron's poem : a 
strange production, full of talent and singularity, as 
everything he writes must be : some highly beauti- 
ful passages, and some highly humorous ones ; but 
as a whole not publishable. Don Juan's mother is 
Lady Byron, and not only her learning, but various 
other points about her, ridiculed. He talks of her 
favourite dress being dimity (which is the case), 
'dimity' rhyming very comically with 'sublimity ;' 
and the conclusion of one stanza is, ' I hate a 
dumpy woman,' meaning Lady B. again. This 
would disgust the public beyond endurance. There 
is also a systematized profligacy running through 
it which would not be borne. Hobhouse has 
undertaken the delicate task of letting him know 
our joint opinions." 

" April 30th. Murray writes to me that Hob- 
house has received another letter from Lord Byron, 
peremptorily insisting on the publication of ' Don 
Juan.' But they have again remonstrated. The 
murder, however, will out some, time or other." 1 

The remonstrances of his " cursed puritanical 
committee," as Lord Byron called them, were how- 
ever in vain. He would hear of no omission or 
curtailment, with the exception of a passage refer- 



1 " Moore's Journals and Correspondence," vol. ii. pp. 266 
and 285. 



i [ng i" i "i.i t . i ■ . 1 1 1 1 < • . i • • 1 1 . .mil one other.' M i. Frere 
always regarded IJyron'a Inflexibility on this point 
.i i .i .;i. .ii misfortune to English literature, Some 
<>i i he p. i '.i".' ■■ in " I '"ii I uan " he i onsidered equal 
to anj i inn", evei writ ten by one w hoiii lie pla< ed 
hi the firs! i .mi-, "i modern English pocta rhe 
|..i ■. h i "■ ■ vvhii ii foi med I he grounds i >i his objei I ion 
i" ihr publii ation oi iii< - poem as II stands, were, in 
his opinion, no Less poetical than moral blemishes j 
.in.i would probably nevei have been written, .ui<l 
ccrtainlj nevei pu! ilished had Bj ron been In his 
natural frame oi mind, and among real friends in 
his own country, instead ol writing and publishing 
in .i itate "i iinii.ii in .ii exi itement, amid such < om 
panionshlp as sui roundi d him .ii \ enii e 

I >m mi", 1 8 1 8 i<>. M i Frere seems to ha> e devoted 
urn, h oi his time to the translations, bj w hii h, pro 
bablj . i athei than by his oi Iginal w oi ks, his rank 
ami 'ii". i he | '. >el s ol the pi cscnl < cnl urj will be de 
i. -I mined I ie had b rare i ombinal Ion ol .ill I hose 
powers which arc necessary to reproduce the ideas 
oi .i distant age, and oi a different language, in su< Ii 
modern dress as the original authoi might have 
used bad he lived nov\ . and he had also the critical 
powei which enabled him to detect and point out 
Hi, secret oi good and bad I ranslat Ion, and t" i.i\ 
down canons which might aid others in the evei 
tempting but arduous task oi transmuting into 
modern English verse the wit and poetrj oi ilw - 
.in. Icnta 

riir undertaking was "n> - foi which, from his 
ichoolboj days, he had shown a special taste and 
apt iin.i, 1 1 is eai liei ex pei intents in translation 
are thus described bj Mti Norton "In April, 1808, 
Southey v\ rites lo S< oil 'l saw Imtiv in I ondon, 



■ | .. •• m,,,mi •'■■ I ii-- ol Byron," vol l\ pp i |8 nnd 1 1" 
"i,u,r. to Mi Miui.n oi I. in loth, -'-iii. sao Fob tit, 



, I 

and he has promised to lei mo print Ins translations 
from the " Poems del Cid." they are admirably 
done Indeed, 1 nevei sa>& anyth fficult to 

do, and i excellently, except youi supple 

ment to Sii ti istrem.' ' rhese tra ap 

peared in I - \ >pend \ to Southey's 'Chronicle ol 
the Cid,' and e .»ll t lu- praise that Southey 

w> them, Mi ricknor, in lu^ 'Histon ol 
bpanish 1 iterature,' quotes some pa from 

them, and chara< Mi Erci ■ the 

most accomplished scholars England lus produced, 
and one whom Sii Mackintosh has p^ 

Bounced to be the first of English translal 
Frcre's excellence as .t translatoi had, indeed, been 
exhibited at .1 very early age, In Ellis' 
mens oi the Earl) English poets,' which first ap 
■ Anglo Saxon Ode on v. helstans 
\ ven in the original, with a literal trans 

lation, to which is subjoined a metrical v< 
supplied, says Mi i ''•••. ' by the kindness of a friend ' 
This friend was the young Frere, and Mr, Ellis 
adds; ' Hus [version] was written several years ago, 
during ilu x controversy occasioned by the poems 
attributed to Rowley, and was intended as an imi 
tation ol the style and language oi the fourteenth 
century, rhereadei will probably heai with some 
surprise that this singulai instance ol critical ingc 
nuit) was the composition ol an Eton school boj 
\ an example of skilful adoption ol the language 
and style of an earlj period, this version is not less 
remarkable, undei the circumstances, than the com- 
positions ol Chatterton, 'It is, 1 says Mackintosh, 
in his 'Historj ol England,' 'a double Imitation, 



1 South*) adds, " i do not betteva that man) men have .i 
greatei commando! language and versification than myself, 
and yet tlu-> i.»siv ol gi\ in;-, .i specimen ol that wonderful poem 
l ihrunk from fearing the difficulty." Southe] to waltai 

ScOtt, April I tnd, tl 



176 MEMOIR OF 

unmatched perhaps in literary history, in which the 
writer gave an earnest of that faculty of catching 
the peculiar genius, and preserving the character- 
istic manner, of his original, which, though the spe- 
cimens of it be too few, places him alone among 
English translators.' And Scott, in his ' Essay on 
Imitation of the Ancient Ballads,' written in 1830, 
and published in the 'Minstrelsy of the Scottish 
Border,' says : ' I have only met, in my researches 
into these matters, with one poem, which, if it had 
been produced as ancient, could not have been de- 
tected on internal evidence. It is the "War Song 
upon the Victory at Brunnanburg, translated from 
the Anglo-Saxon into Anglo-Norman," by the Right 
Honourable John Hookham Frere.' 

" At the time of the publication of ' Sir Tristrem,' 
in 1804, Frere expressed a cordial admiration for 
the performance ; and George Ellis wrote to Scott 
that Frere, ' whom you would delight to know, and 
who would delight to know you,' has ' no hesitation 
in saying that he considers " Sir Tristrem " as by far 
the most interesting work that has as yet been pub- 
lished on the subject of our earliest poets, and, 
indeed, such a piece of literary antiquity as no one 
could have, d priori, supposed to exist.' To this 
Scott answers : ' Frere is so perfect a master of the 
ancient style of composition, that I would rather 
have his suffrage than that of a whole synod of your 
vulgar antiquaries.' 

" In translating the ancient Spanish poem of the 
Cid, Frere was thus at work in a field of which he 
was doubly master. The full merit of his versions 
is hardly to be understood without acquaintance 
with the archaic vigour and simplicity of the ori- 
ginal, and the peculiarities of its diction and versi- 
fication. . . . 

" There is probably no classic author of whose 
works a good translation is more difficult than Aris- 
tophanes. The wonderful combination of widely 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 177 

different qualities which he exhibits in his comedies, 
— the knowledge of human nature, the insight into 
affairs, the solid sense, the fertile invention, the 
daring fancy, the inexhaustible humour, the pro- 
digious exaggeration, both in invention and in 
language, which, even in its wildest and most 
amusing excesses, displays the controlling influence 
of the finest taste, and of native elegance of mind, 
the keen irony, the vehement invective, the serious 
purpose under the comic mask, — demand, if theplays 
are to be fitly rendered, a scarcely less wonderful 
combination of powers in the translator ; while the 
exquisite form of the poetry, the melody of the 
various rhythm, and the frequent change in the 
versification, modulated according to each change 
in tone of sentiment, require for their reproduction in 
another far less flexible language, with another and 
far poorer system of metres, not only a consummate 
mastery of the forms of verse, but also a vocabulary 
in the highest degree pure, racy, and idiomatic." 1 

Mr. Norton then refers to Mr. Frere's article on 
Mitchell's Aristophanes, in the Quarterly Review 
of July, 1820, 2 of which he gives a summary, and 

1 "North American Review," ubi sitpra, p. 160. 

8 "Talked of Aristophanes. I mentioned the admirable 
article upon Aristophanes in the "Quarterly" two or three 
years ago. Sharpe remembered it also, and thought it alto- 
gether perfect." (Moore's "Journals," vol. ii. p. 265, Jan. 30, 
1819.) The article here referred to, which will be found re- 
printed in the second volume, was Mr. Frere's only con- 
tribution to the " Quarterly." He had been one of the original 
projectors of the Review, when it was started by the late 
Mr. Murray in 1807, with promises of support from Walter 
Scott, Canning, Southey, and others of the best writers on the 
Tory side of politics, and with Gifford as editor. Mr. Frere 
thought that Gifford exceeded the legitimate discretion of 
an editor in omitting from the Review of Mitchell's Aris- 
tophanes an example which was intended to show how it 
was possible to treat modern English social life and politics 
dramatically, in the same spirit in which Aristophanes treated 
the social life and politics of Athens four hundred years before 

X 



178 MEMOIR OF 

observes that the principle of generalization in 
translation, which Mr. Frere there lays down, " is 
obviously one which can be safely adopted only by 
a genius corresponding in quality to that of the 
original. Few writers could hope to apply it suc- 
cessfully even in the translation of an author far less 
difficult than Aristophanes. 

" But Mr. Frere's genius was sufficient for the 
task, and his translations of Aristophanes are the 
proof of the soundness of his rule, as Tie was capable 
of applying it. They are works of the best literary 
art. They reproduce the essential, permanent 
characteristics of the Aristophanic comedy in such 
a manner that from their perusal the English reader 
not only may obtain a truer conception of the genius 
of the Athenian playwright than any but the most 
intelligent and thorough students of the original 
derive from the Greek itself, but also finds himself 
charmed with the plays as pieces of English com- 
position, and contributions to English comedy. 
Frere was so complete a master of both languages, 
he entered so sympathetically into the spirit of Aris- 
tophanes, was so well versed in the learning re- 
quisite for understanding the allusions in which his 
comedies abound, and he possessed so fully the 
humour and feeling needed to appreciate their most 
fleeting, remote, and delicate touches of poetry and 

our era. The specimen was set up in type, and a proof was 
in existence many years after ; but I have failed to discover 
any further trace of it. Two other articles, on Pitt and Fox, 
have been attributed to Mr. Frere ; but I am assured, on the 
unquestionable authority of my friend, Mr. John Murray, that 
they were written by the late Sir Robert Grant. They were 
among the earliest published writings of that elegant scholar 
and lamented statesman, and were also among the first of 
those political articles which, to our own day, have maintained 
for the " Quarterly " an historical reputation. The article 
on Aristophanes is signed " W." (for Whistlecraft), probably 
one of the first instances of a reviewer signing his contri- 
bution. 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 179 

of wit, — he was, in fine, such a scholar and such a 
poet, that the very difficulties of his task seem to 
present themselves only to be happily overcome. 
As a contribution to literature, his versions of these 
plays stand unmatched. 1 Their value is greatly 
increased, moreover, by the comment, which is 
sometimes in the form of brief side-notes and stage- 
directions, and sometimes in that of longer notes, 
inserted in the text, for the purpose of illustration 
and explanation. These notes are of the best sort, 
and really assist the reader to intelligent enjoyment 
of the plays, enabling him to read them, as it were, 
through the eyes and with the keen perceptions of 
the most sympathetic of spectators." 

Coleridge writes to Crabb Robinson, in June, 
18 1 7, inviting him and Tieck to Highgate : "I 
should be most happy to make him and that admir- 
able man, Mr. Frere, acquainted. Their pursuits 
have been so similar ; and to convince Mr. Tieck 
that he is the man among us in whom Taste at its 
maximum has vitalized itself into productive power 
— Genius, you need only show him the incompar- 
able translation annexed to Southey's ' Cid ' (which, 
by the bye, would perhaps give Mr. Tieck the most 

1 A critic in the "Pall Mall Gazette" for November 29, 
1867, in an article on Rudd's Aristophanes, says, with 
reference to Mitchell's translation : — " Mr. Hookham Frere 
made it the subject of a most admirable essay in the ' Quar- 
terly,' which contains more valuable reflection on the principles 
of translation generally than will be found anywhere within 
the same compass. . . . His own versions of some of the 
plays . . . not only excel all that Mitchell had done, and 
all that Walsh or Wheelwright had done in the interval, but 
placed him in the very first rank of translators of the world. 
Indeed, Frere is the true standard by which to test everybody 
who ventures on the same ground. Apart from the extra- 
ordinary merit of his literary execution, he enters into the 
dramatic spirit of the plays with the sympathetic insight of a 
spectator. He succeeded with Aristophanes by dint of being 
himself Aristophanic in politics, in humour, in poetry, and in 
scholarship." 



180 MEMOIR OF 

favourable impression of Southey's own powers), 
and I would finish the work off by Mr. Frere's 
' Aristophanes.' In such goodness, too, as both my 
Mr. Frere (the Rt. Hon. J. H. Frere) and his brother 
George (the lawyer, in Brunswick Square) live, 
move, and have their being in, there is Genius." 1 

None of these translations were however printed, 
and but few of them were completed for many 
years afterwards. They were taken up from time 
to time, at intervals of leisure, during the unsettled 
life which he led before he finally took up his resi- 
dence in Malta. 

In 1818, Lady Erroll, while "visiting the new 
rooms built at the British Museum for the Elgin 
marbles," had caught a severe cold, from the effects 
of which she never entirely recovered. After try- 
ing various changes of air to Brompton 2 and the 
coast, Mr. Frere settled for a short time at Tun- 
bridge Wells, whence in a letter dated November 
ioth, 1818, to his brother George, Lady Erroll 
writes : — 

" You must not look for us nor think at all about 
us until you hear we are at Blake's Hotel. We are 
almost packed up, in short, as packed up as any 
people can be while they still sleep in a house ; but 
there has been some interruption, which is always 



1 Crabb Robinson, vol. ii. p. 57. In a letter to Mr. Heber, 
written in 181 7, Mr. Frere says : " I am sorry that I shall 
not be able to attend the club to-morrow . . . any 
other engagement I would have put off for the sake of giving 
Bozzy a white ball. I cannot give you any more precise 
direction as to Tieck's habitation at Oxford ; but I should 
hope that anybody there would not be at a loss to find him 
out." 

2 Mr. W. Turner, writing from the Foreign Office, in Sept. 
18 1 7, to Mr. Bartle Frere, says : "Your eldest [brother] has 
a delicious little house at Brompton, in which I called on 
him, and he comes sometimes, though rarely, to the Office ; 
Gloucester Lodge is his chief resort. He is there perpet- 
ually." 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 181 

a bad thing when one has settled a journey — one 
day put off, puts off several. Mr. Canning stopped 
us on Saturday, as he said he might come for a 
day, and on the Monday a note arrived to say he 
would be here at five o'clock, and accordingly he 
arrived, and made my dear husband very happy. 
They were both in great good humour with each 
other, and I left them early in the evening to go 
to Mrs. Chaloner's, where we were to have had our 
farewell dinner that day, and the two friends en- 
joyed each other much the whole evening, and were, 
I believe, much obliged to me for having left them. 
Canning went off to Brighton yesterday, sent on 
his chaise, had his riding-horse walked after him, 
while he and your brother walked half the first stage 
together. Think what a walk his poor dear excel- 
lency had had, — I believe fourteen miles, — and he 
came back not in the least tired. . . It was quite 
pleasant to see how happy these two friends were 
together on Sunday. Canning was in good spirits, 
and in very good humour." 

The following lines, which have not, as far as I 
can learn, been published, appear to have been 
written about this time. They were repeated to me 
as a versification, by Mr. Frere, of a letter which 
Mr. Canning showed him, received by a lady, who 
had been applied to for a servant's character. 
Another copy attributes them to Mr. Canning, as 
his rendering of a conversation, at which he hap- 
pened to be present, between two ladies — 

" Wanted a Maid to make herself generally useful. 

" The person I hired would first be required 

On me as my maid to attend ; 
Then my measure to take, and my mantuas to make, 

And those of the Colonel to mend. 

My new bombazeen she must wash very clean, 
With my muslins and fine what-d'ye-call-its ; 

My silk hose in a tub she must lather and scrub, 
And when she's done mine, Col. P 's. 



1 82 MEMOIR OF 

House linen and stores, and tradespeople's scores, 

She must note in a neat little book ; 
And when company comes she must do butter'd crumbs, 

And make pastry instead of the cook. 

She at nothing must stickle, young gherkins must pickle, 
And if housemaids of work shall complain, 

Up stairs she must clamber, clean out the best chamber, 
Then back to her pickling again. 

There's a housekeeper's room, but she must not presume 

To pop her pert visage within it ; 
If strange servants are there, and will hand her a chair, 

She may then just sit down for a minute. 

If for this she engages, besides her year's wages, 

(Though no stipulation I make it), 
If the winter prove hard, an old gown's her reward, — 

In summer she'll chiefly go naked." 

No change of climate to be found in England 
seemed permanently to benefit Lady Erroll's health. 
In October, 1819, Mr. George Frere writes of his 
brother as " thinking of taking his wife abroad to 
avoid the suffering of last winter," and in August, 
1820, he describes her as "very ill again, and my 
brother quite out of heart about her. Canning " 
(who had been staying with them) " is going away 
to-morrow, and my brother has asked me not to 
leave him. He wishes me to go into the City to see 
about ships." A few days later he writes that "a 
ship is engaged," the " Sicily," Captain Cupper, who 
undertook to visit such ports, and to stay as long 
at each of them, as Mr. Frere might require, and 
they sailed for the Mediterranean soon after, Mr. 
Frere's unmarried sister and a niece of Lady Erroll 
accompanying them. 

The voyage answered its main purpose, and after 
a short stay at Lisbon, they proceeded to the Medi- 
terranean. From Palermo he wrote to his brother 
George on November 15th, 1820 : — 

" Susan tells me that she has written to you, but 
that her letter is a fortnight old. You will not, 



JOHN HOOKHAM FEE RE. 183 

therefore, be sorry to hear that we have been going 
on well up to this date. 

" My Lady yesterday got a little cold, but we are 
used to these occasional interruptions in her re- 
covery. She is better to-day, and is at this moment 
chatting in very great spirits with Susan. We have 
seen all the things of which Susan has told you, 
and about a week ago took my Lady ashore, with 
the sailors carrying her sofa, to see a magnificent 
house and gardens, made about twenty years ago, 
on the side of the mountain at the entrance of the 
harbour. 1 It might now be bought for about a 
twentieth part of what it cost ; such is the state of 
things here. The Neapolitans are ramming their 
revolution down the throats of the people here, and 
will never rest till they have ruined and confiscated 
and enslaved the whole island. There are no Eng- 
lish here except the resident merchants, and we get 
no news, except now and then a sight of " Gali- 
gnani" papers printed at Paris. We have seen pretty 
nearly all that is to be seen here. I had intended 
to go to Segesta, where there is a very perfect 
temple, like those at Paestum, and as old ; but from 
what I hear of the state of the country, I shall not 
venture. This place has spoilt me for Malta, but 
go I must." 

In the extracts from his letters which follow, I 
have been obliged, as a rule, to curtail all that is of 
merely domestic or family interest; but I have done 
so with some hesitation and regret, for such portions 
of his letters illustrate in a remarkable degree the 
kindliness of his nature, and his unfailing sympathy 

1 The Belmonte Palace on a hill at the foot of Monte Pele- 
grino overlooking the harbour. Mr. Frere seems to have 
been at one time inclined to settle at Palermo rather than at 
Malta. One reason for finally preferring Malta was the very 
•characteristic one, that as he drew his pension from England, 
he felt bound, if possible, to live where it would be spent 
among British subjects. 



184 MEMOIR OF 

with the cares and trials, as well as the intellectual 
pursuits, of all with whom he had any ties of kin- 
dred or friendship. 

Almost every letter he wrote to any intimate 
friend or member of his own family bears witness 
to his constant solicitude for his wife's health. 
Every change was watched with affectionate 
anxiety ; and how best to minister to her comfort 
and happiness was, up to the day of her death 
many years afterwards, the one ruling motive of all 
his thoughts and actions. 

Arrived at Malta, he wrote a long letter to his 
brother George, in April, 1821. After some excel- 
lent advice regarding the college allowance of the 
son of a literary friend, to whom he wished to give 
every chance of University distinction, but who, he 
feared, might, if he found his life too easy, be di- 
verted from his good resolutions "eniti per ardua," 
he relates that they had a rough passage from Syra- 
cuse, but that Lady Erroll was better, and sends a 
message " that she was on deck, and had seen Malta 
at last." Her niece and his sister, he said, "had 
already established themselves in a very good house,, 
which the General, Sir Manly Power, has allotted 
to me, and which I have furnished with exquisite 
cheapness. I have taken another house for the 
summer — a very good one for ^40. It is close upon 
the water, and will enable us to promenade in a 
boat, if we can do no better;" and here, with very 
little intermission, he passed the remaining twenty- 
five years of his life. 

To Dr. Young, who had been both a professional 
and literary friend, he wrote soon after his arrival : — 

" Malta, May 23rd, 1821. 

" My dear Young, 

" I send you something of a curiosity, a fac- 
simile of an inscription found at Syracuse a few 
years ago, and now in the possession of the anti- 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 185 

quarian Capodieci. I can have no doubt of its 
authenticity from external evidence, the notoriety 
of the circumstance of its discovery in rebuilding an 
old house in the quarter of the town formerly inha- 
bited by the Jews, the no price which was paid for 
it by its present possessor, and the little value which 
he seemed to attach to it ; so little, that I believe, 
with a little coaxing and a few dollars, I might have 
got possession of it, if I had thought it fair to carry 
away from the place a monument which so pecu- 
liarly belonged to it. He did not know, nor did I, 
till I came here, and had an opportunity of refer- 
ring to Pindar, that the lines were to be found in one 
of the Olympic odes ; it was rather a disappoint- 
ment to me, the lines being manifestly Pindaric, 
and as such above the reach, I think, of forgery ; 
whereas, now the external evidence (as above stated) 
is the only proof, though a fully convincing one to 
me, for Capodieci is at war with all his brother 
antiquaries at Syracuse, who would not have failed 
to attack him if there had been any the least suspi- 
cion of a forgery ; indeed they hardly seemed to 
have troubled themselves about it, or to have 
thought more of it than the proprietor himself. 
Capodieci is a very extraordinary man, a most 
zealous and indefatigable antiquary, and has filled 
above sixty volumes in folio with antiquarian re- 
searches and transcripts of records and documents 
(of the middle ages chiefly), which he has presented 
to the public library. But he is by no means what 
we should call a classical scholar; the mere circum- 
stance of character, therefore, would be enough to 
remove from my mind any suspicion of forgery. 
The original is in the inside of the covering of a 
sarcophagus made of baked clay. Several of the 
same size and form, and serving for the same pur- 
pose, are to be met with in Syracuse ; but no other, 
that ever I heard of, has been found with an inscrip- 
tion. I should imagine it to be older than the 



186 MEMOIR OF 

Roman conquest of Sicily. The cursive character, 
which is its great peculiarity, is evidently alluded to 
by Aristophanes, as used in taking notes in courts 
of justice and in debate; but I believe there is no 
specimen existing of the antiquity which seems to 
belong to this relic. When you have shown it to 
the few people in town who take an interest in such 
matters, I will thank you to send it to Cambridge, 
to my brother, and Professor Monk, or either of 
them. 1 My doctor has written so fully and so 
clearly on our medical matters, that I have nothing 
to add on that score. 

"Believe me, dear doctor,- yours ever, 

"J. H. FRERE." 

The following, dated Malta, March 31st, 1822, is 
to his brother Bartle : — 

" I have only a moment to anticipate the sailing 
of the packet, but I will not omit thanking you for 
two letters, one of which I cannot at this moment 
lay my hands on, but which I remember related to 
Southey's history. I perfectly agree with you in 
the good taste and good sense of avoiding all con- 
troversial matters. 

Ob yaq ia-Qxov Kixi^avovtri ke^to/aeiv J57' avopacn." 

And I hope that if there is anything of the kind 

1 The inscription consists of the first four lines of the fifth 
antistrophe of the sixth Olympic ode : — 

EiTTov $£ fj-ifA-vaa-Qai LvpaKovtrav te Jtai Oprwylag' 
Tav 'iEpaiv na.9a.pa! trKa-Tfrca Sisirtev, 
"Apna /xr)$6[A.evog, ^oivMowei^av 
AfAtyiiru AafAarpa. "KivKnarov te Ouj/arpof loprav. 

Thus translated by Moore : — 

" Bid them remember Syracuse and sing 
Of proud Ortygia's throne, secure 
In Hiero's rule, her upright king; 
With frequent prayer he serves and worship pure 
The rosy-sandal'd Ceres, and her fair 
Daughter, whose car the milk-white steeds impel." 

* " For it is not right to find fault with our dead heroes." 



JOHN HOOK HAM FRERE. 187 

(which I greatly deprecate) it will be known that I 
at least had no concern in it. I am glad you are 
satisfied with Hamilton. I only wish he could 
tempt you to pay him a visit. Why should you 
not go to see Rome and Florence, and Naples ? it 
is what most gentlefolks do now-a-days, and then, 
perhaps, you would come and give a look at us here 
in Malta. It will be a long time before the Span- 
iards acknowledge the independence of America, 
and I suppose we shall not send a real Envoy or 
Ambassador there till they do. I have kept your 
secret, except only and solely to my Lady. As to 
the thing, 1 I think the first consideration is your 
health. Peru or Mexico or Chili would do well, 
but you must not go to die of a yellow fever among 
the Columbians and Cundinarcans. For the rest, 
to be a notoriously ill-requited servant of the State, 
may not be an unsafe situation in the times which 
are manifestly coming on, and for which we ought 
all to prepare ourselves." 

The following is from an undated letter to his 
brother Bartle, but apparently written in the same 
year (1822) : — 

" I wish you would send the enclosed to Southey 
with a civil note, and such papers from my Roydon 
Box as are fit to be comm imitated, relative to the 
state of things at Seville. As to the controversy in 
which my name is more concerned, I have taken a 
resolution to leave it as it lies." 

His sister writes from the house he had taken in 
Strada Forni, Valetta, in November, 1822, that he 
had been suffering from a chill, " but is again well, 
and fortifies himself by taking some exercise, and 
wearing coat within coat of flannel. He has actually 
determined to ride, which will be an excellent thing 
for him, and I do suppose he will mount soon, for 

1 Apparently, an offer of employment as Minister to one of 
the South American States. 



188 MEMOIR OF 

the horse has been really brought ready saddled 
for him once, by his own order ! . . . We spent 
all yesterday at a Maltese wedding, and were all 
much diverted. My brother was there, very joyous 
and agreeable." 

Mr. Canning had complained of the infrequency 
of his letters, and his brother Bartle had charged 
him with neglecting his translation of Aristophanes. 
In reply to the latter accusation, he said, " I have 
not yet been able to turn my mind to Aristophanes, 
but — when the packet is gone — and my Lady gets a 
little better — and I have finished my task of bottling 
in the cellar, I will set to work, I will indeed." 

This promise seems to have been faithfully kept ; 
for he writes to his brother George from Malta, 
January, 1823 : — 

" I have sent you the translation of the ' Knights ' 
by Montgomery, whom I wish to introduce to your 
acquaintance and friendship, of which he is well 
worthy. It will serve to amuse you, and the copy 
will be safe if Lizzy does not lose it. 

" Lord C is not a ruffian or a ragamuffin by 

any means, but a very honourable well-mannered 
young man, rather too high-spirited for his situa- 
tion, and too much disposed to act upon impulse ; 
at least, having seen a good deal of him, I could 
never find out any other faults that he had, and I 
believe him to be very free from scandalous or de- 
grading vices. His pecuniary difficulties are not 
of his own creating, but arise from his father's 
treatment of him, yet I never heard him speak of 
his father otherwise than with respect. 

" If I had an heiress to dispose of, I should think 
her lucky to meet with no worse a match." 

On March 28th, 1823, he wrote : — 

" I have wasted my time in a letter to William 
upon the Paston Letters, 1 which has barely left me 

1 This refers to a project which he had frequently pressed 



JOHN HOOKHAM PRE RE. 189 

a minute to thank you for your attention to my in- 
terests in the New River shares." 

A few days later he added, with reference to his 
wife's health : — 

" I have just written to Temple a letter, in which 
I say, ' from the experience of the last six months, 
I must conclude that our joint return to England is 
hopeless, my wish therefore to find a tenant for 
Roydon is increased by the mortification which she 
feels at a house being kept up, upon a prospect of 
the only event which would render it possible for 
me to inhabit it, but which, in fact, I should not 



on his brother William, to edit and publish all of the Paston 
letters which had not already been printed. Sir John Fenn, 
in the first edition of the letters which he published in 1786-9, 
in 4 vols., had selected chiefly those which referred to events 
of some historical importance. The originals of most of these 
Sir John had bound, and presented, with his presentation 
copy of the printed letters, to George III., but some of the 
MS. volumes appear to have been subsequently lost, as they 
were not to be found when the King's Library was many years 
afterwards transferred to the British Museum by order of 
George IV. After Lady Fenn's death, many of her husband's 
MSS. came into the possession of her nephew and heir, Mr. 
Serjeant (William) Frere, and among them some of the origi- 
nal Paston letters which had not been published by Sir John 
Fenn, apparently because they had little reference to politics 
and events of historical importance. But Mr. Frere con- 
sidered that the circumstance of their dealing mainly with the 
domestic household affairs of a country gentleman's family in 
times before the Tudors gave them a peculiar interest, and 
he urged the propriety of publishing them. He remarked of 
such letters that, apart from any historical importance they 
may possess as illustrating particular events, they have a 
value of their own, as showing how little, except in externals, 
the details of private life have altered in the class to which 
the writers belonged ; and how much in essentials, in its 
friendships and its feuds, in its plans for advancing family 
interests by marriages, by inheritances, by thrift, and by 
energetic pursuit of a profession, the life of a squire's family 
in Lancastrian times, resembled that of our own days. His 
suggestion was in part carried out by the publication, in 1823, 
• of a fifth volume. 



I go MEMOIR OF 

wish to inhabit in that case. M , I am told, is 

looking out for a house in the country, and I should 
be very glad to give him a lease of it, and you 
would not perhaps be sorry to have him for a 
neighbour. I am writing to George upon the sub- 
ject ;' and so I do, you see." 

He then discusses the terms of lease, half play- 
fully, half in earnest, and sundry possible additions 
and alterations, of which he sends a plan, calculated 
to give the house more and warmer rooms, "and I 
constitute William (Stewart) Rose the architect 
thereof," ending with — 

" I have made two new rooms, because on paper 
they cost nothing. And now, my dear, you will be 
glad to hear that my poor Lady is a little better, 
and I hope we may got a little strength this sum- 
mer, but I reallydread the winter even here, though 
the one before last we managed to get through very 
tolerably." 

In the June following, he wrote : — 

" In the meantime, as Captain Cupper (who took 
us out) is returned here, and now in a long quaran- 
tine, we propose (if he can get a freight to Mar- 
seilles) to take a jaunt there, which I think may be 
of service to her. I find that Susan and she think 
it quite a natural and easy thing that you should 
travel all the way for the sake of seeing us. I 
should not dare to think of mentioning it. But if 
Bartle, who has his time and money, I hope, to 
spare, should happen to be at Paris, I think he will 
receive a letter stinking of brimstone and dated 
quarantine, to inform him of our arrival, and point- 
ing out to him the conveniences and advantages of 
a journey of six hundred miles and back in the hot 
weather. 

" As to the disposal of my time, I have taken a 
fancy to learn as much Hebrew as may enable me 
to get through the two or three words which one 
meets with in a note, and which it is a mortification 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 191 

to be obliged to pass over in ignorance. I have 
found one very curious thing already, viz., that their 
measure of syllabic quantity must have been much 
more accurate and distinct than that of the Greeks, 
or at least than that which the Greek grammarians 
have given us ; and I rind many things, which had 
occurred to me obscurely in my habit of verse- 
making, reduced to a regular system. If I had a 
fancy to learn Arabic, it would have been an easy 
matter, for it walks the streets. Young Roper has 
made a great progress in it, and here is a young 
lady of seventeen who is studying it with great 
success. Susan has half a mind to learn a little 
Hebrew, it" you please. * * My Lady is reading 
Madame de Sevigne backwards and forwards. I 
cannot bear her, for it is clear to me from her let- 
ters, that when her son was at the arm}-, she would 
not have been sorry to hear that he had been shot. 
' Mon his est a 1'armee du Roi, e'est-a-dire a la 
gueule du loup — comme les autres.' You see that 
this is her company-phrase, the proper conversa- 
tional cant, and this she sends in a letter to her 
daughter." 

In the course of the sea-trip, which had been 
proposed when this letter was begun, they visited 
Naples, whence his sister wrote of the great enjoy- 
ment he had found in excursions to Paestum, 
Salerno, and Amalfi ; and in the society of Mr. 
Hamilton, and many amusements and occupations 
which were not within his reach at Malta. 

After his return to Malta in March, 18J4, writing 
on affairs connected with his property in Suffolk, he 
observes : — 

" It is not, however, a business which can be dis- 
cussed or settled at this distance. I feel that for 
other businesses I ought to be in England, but when 
and how it can be managed is a puzzling question. 
My Lad}-, I am afraid, could never bear the climate 
even in summer, and three or four months of ab- 



192 MEMOIR OF 

sence would, in her eyes, be a grievous deduction 
from her remaining- comforts. 

" We will talk of other matters. My Lady said 
she had told you that I had done another play of 
Aristophanes. It is the ' Acharnians ' translated from 
beginning to end, at least it will be in two or three 
days. I hope to be able to send it you by some 
safe conveyance. I wish I could get from Bulmer, 
the printer, a copy of what is already printed of the 
' Frogs.' I have got no copy, and I should like to 
have two or three. 

"Did I thank John for his Whistlecraftian flight, 
the 'Titano-Machia' ? I will send him in return 
some English hexameters of my own, of the right 
sort, without false quantities, all about Malta, at 
least they begin about Malta. 

" It is Shrove Monday, and there is not a servant 
in the house to take the letters, and Susan is shout- 
ing and ringing after them, and the boys hallooing 
and blowing horns in the street. It is a perfect 
Barthelemy Fair. Oh, there is somebody at last. 
But we are too late, and have to pay." 

A long business letter, dated Malta, April, 1824, 
discusses at great length, and with wonderful hu- 
mour, acuteness, and cleverness, a number of ques- 
tions relating to his property, which he wished to 
consolidate and clear of various old burdens, " for 
the purpose," as he expresses it, " of annulling, can- 
celling, and confounding" an old mortgage. He 
makes constant reference to his wife's opinion : — 

" And so likewise thought my Lady, who is wiser 

than anybody You will think perhaps 

that I ought to come over and look after my own 
concerns like a man, but with the care of so frail a 
life, I cannot bring myself to subtract so much from 
its remaining comforts by absenting myself for any 
time, but perhaps, if you report progress, I may run 
over for six weeks. You will receive from Captain 
Cupper a pipe of Syracuse wine, the wine is a 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 193 

present of mine, but you will have to pay freight 
and duty. We think it very good here, and drink 
it with great comfort and satisfaction." 

On June 23rd, 1824, he again writes to his brother 
George : — 

" I will not trouble you with business this time, 
but will thank you for three copies of the ' Frogs,' 
which came safe to hand. I should like to have 
the second volume of Mitchell and the trans- 
lation of the ' Birds ' by Cary, the translator of 
Dante, if I were not ashamed of giving you so 
much trouble who have so many other things to 
do. Susan says that the verses from the ' Cid,' that 
is to say, the copy of them which I intended to 
send to you, is hers, and that she will send it to 
Lizzy, and she is doing so, I believe, at this mo- 
ment ; perhaps Lizzy will let you have a sight of 
them ; if she should, pray observe how well the Cid 
manages to leave off with the laugh on his own 
side, when he is baffled by the Count's obstinacy, 
the dry humour with which the Bishop's character 
and appointment are mentioned is not at all exag- 
gerated, and the motive of doing it for public effect 
is quite as clear in the original. Observe too the 
wild state of the country, the King with his Court 
moving about, and the messenger riding in search 
of him. Observe the real arrogance of Minaya's 
first address to the King, studiously clothed in all 
the forms of the most abject submission, and com- 
pare it with his modern respectful courtly style, 
when the King has shown himself favourably dis- 
posed. But I have not told you about my Lady, 
who has not been very well, which I am inclined to 
attribute to a long continuance of Sirocco winds, 
we still however go about in the carriage of an 
evening, and I mean in a day or two to try airing in 
a boat, which has in general agreed with her. We 
shall likewise make an excursion to Gozo for change 
of air. As this is a literary letter hitherto, I will 

O 



194 MEMOIR OF 

send you some of my hexameters, all that are 
written out. Observe that hexameters (having six 
musical bars in one verse) are to be read very slow, 
one of them should occupy the time of a common 
English couplet." 

Another long letter on business later in the same 
year, laments his distance from England, " three 
months between question and answer," and ends — 

" I have been amusing her (Lady Erroll) and 
myself for the last fortnight with scenes of Aristo- 
phanes — the ' Birds.' You recollect, I think, some 
part of it being done at Tunbridge, the scene where 
Iris is arrested and brought before Peisthetairus. 
It is a very long play and tedious in some parts, 
which may be omitted with advantage, but I have 
done about 1,200 lines of it, which in my humble 
opinion are excellent. The ' Acharnians ' you will 
have a copy of by the first fair opportunity. It is 
fairly transcribed and complete." 

In a letter written in October of the same year in 
reply to remonstrances against what seemed an 
unnecessary act of liberality, he writes : — 

" Therefore your caution and Bartle's against a 
sudden propensity to largess, does not apply in this 
case. Your prohibition of fooleries in the form of 
medals, pictures, &c. &c. is a very just one, and I 
trust that a growing indifference to that sort of 
trumpery will enable me to comply with it. They 
are the proper playthings for a childless old fool, 
who looks to surviving for a year, or a year and 
a half, after his death, in the sensation which his 
sale catalogue is to produce among the connois- 
seurs. The immortality of men of taste and re- 
finement !" 

In October of the same year he wrote : — 

" My Lady's letter will have told you graphically 
(which is the great beauty of her letters — I hope 
you keep them) how much I was pleased at the 
completion of this, and the other concerns for which 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 195 

I am indebted to your care and industry. I trust, 
however, that my anticipation of being an old 
hunks is rather likely to be frustrated than fulfilled 
by this change in my affairs, my thoughts about 
money were directed to one point, and, now it is 
accomplished, I hope I shall not be exposed to the 
temptation of looking out for another 

" My plan against the future declension of the 
family is the best, namely, that we should all go in 
a body to colonize, and form a clan at the Cape, or 
Van Diemen's Land. What say you ? I am sure 
Ned would like it, and Hatley. Bartle would go 
for a lounge, and we should persuade him to stay 
with us. My Lady says she has no objection. I 
could take out my books and endeavour to put a 
little literature into the rising generation, and in the 
mean time lend money upon good security at six 
per cent., a great inducement, by the bye, for Bartle 
to remain with us 

" I thank you for Cary's ' Birds,' it is much 
better than Mitchell's translations. Mais ce nest 
pas encore la bonne. Nobody has yet seen the true 
character of Peisthetairus." 

In another letter, referring to iron works, written 
in December, 1824, he observes : — 

" It seems to me that the iron masters are ani- 
mated by the activity of the new markets. They 
do not consider that, except in the case of a 
country rapidly increasing in wealth and population, 
the annual demand for iron is not like that for other 
articles. The consumer of iron is not like the con- 
sumer of salt fish or of printed cottons ; he con- 
sumes very slowly. It is a long time before his 
poker and gridiron are worn out. In a stationary 
country when it is once stocked with iron at a low 
rate, the future demand (except in instances where 
iron may be made applicable to new purposes) will 
be much inferior to the first. Hence, I fear that 
our speculators will experience another re-action, 



196 MEMOIR OF 

their only hope is in the prospect of general peace, 
and increasing population and wealth throughout 
the world, a state of things for which I sincerely 
pray, but on the chance of which I should be very 
sorry to trust my security. And now, my dear 
George, I have worried and jawed long enough." 

In September, 1825, he paid a short visit to 
England. He greatly enjoyed the opportunity 
this afforded for a brief renewal of his personal 
intercourse with Mr. Canning and with others of 
his early friends. Unfortunately few letters rela- 
ting to this period have been preserved, but there 
are elders of the present generation who remember 
the vivid impression made on them in youth by the 
humour and playful fancy which rendered him as 
great a favourite with children as with those of his 
own age. 

Crossing the Continent was in those days a very 
tedious business, and only preferable to the monthly 
sailing packets, whose six-weeks' voyages, inter- 
minable delays, and occasional deviations, when 
blown out of their direct course, as far as to the 
Banks of Newfoundland, are a constant subject of 
complaint in the Malta letters. 

Mr. Frere made some stay at Paris, to meet his 
sister, Lady Orde, who was on the Continent. There 
was no regular or direct communication between 
France and Malta, and his sister Susan writes that 
Lady Erroll was "long unhappy about him, but 
hopes now that the journey will do away the ill 
effects of the climate of Malta, and having been 
long without amusement and society ; and that he 
may be recruited so entirely that she shall have no 
fear of his not being able to remain with her here 
for as long a time as her health may require a warm 
climate." .... 

" I am glad," she adds, " there was a meeting in 
such force at Roydon. It seems to me more like a 
dream than a reality, when I think it is ten years 



JOHN HOOKHAM FEE RE. 197 

since my brother was there ; he must have found 
the trees grown to his heart's content, and I hope 
he was well pleased with all he found ; he writes as 
if he did like every thing. I doubt the books can- 
not be kept in very good order in that large damp 
room, now there is no one at leisure as I was to look 
after and air them." 

In telling his brother, soon after he reached 
England, of his intention of paying this visit to 
Roydon, he had sent kindly messages to his friend 
Lady Margaret Cameron and her daughters, adding, 
" I am afraid Lady Margaret will think that some- 
body is trying to repeat your trick " [of passing him- 
self off as a stranger] " upon her, for I am grown 
woefully thin." 

A letter from his brother Edward's wife describes 
him while on a visit to their cottage near Bath in 
November, 1825, as little aged by his long sojourn at 
Malta. He took his night's rest chiefly by sleeping 
early in the evening, from " seven till eleven, and then 
he has awoke, and entertained his brother and nieces 
by repeating verses which he has translated or com- 
posed, till two o'clock in the morning," which did 
not prevent his rising early next day. A reading 
of "King Lear," with a running commentary to prove 
that the story was founded on a Celtic myth, in 
which Cordelia, the only faithful child, symbolized 
the true religion, is noted as the subject of one of 
these evening dissertations. 

In September of the next year all the brothers 
who were able met to take leave of him at Mr. 
Bartle Frere's house in Savile Row. It was the last 
family gathering of his generation. 

Shortly afterwards he left England and travelled 
vid Italy, accompanied by his brother Bartle and 
their friend Mr. Montgomerie. 

In August, 1827, he lost, by the unexpected death 
of Mr. Canning, the warmest, most intimate, and 
most congenial friend of his youth and early man- 



198 MEMOIR OF 

hood, and his one great link of interest to the 
politics of the day. The depth of his unselfish 
fraternal affection for Mr. Canning was apparent 
even to comparative strangers whenever, during the 
many years he survived his friend, Canning's name 
was mentioned ; and it is not surprising, that he 
had little toleration for those, whose desertion, as 
he considered it, of Pitt's rightful political heir, 
hastened not remotely the loss to England of the 
one man whom he thought capable of guiding the 
nation at a most important crisis. 

Many years afterwards, when the personal 
motives of all concerned had become matters of 
history, he maintained that it was clearly the duty 
of those members of Lord Liverpool's cabinet who 
refused to join Mr. Canning, either to have accepted 
the king's offer and to have made a stand on an 
anti-Catholic policy, without Canning ; or, if they 
thought that impossible, to have joined Canning in 
giving effect to a policy for removing the Roman 
Catholic disabilities, which, in his hands alone, could 
not have been attributed to intimidation. Their 
standing aloof, seemed to him inconsistent with a 
belief in the soundness of their own opinions ; while 
it left the measure to be extorted from the fears of 
the nation, instead of being granted as a concession 
due to its sense of justice. 

He maintained that had the Duke of Wellington 
and Sir Robert Peel supported Mr. Canning at this 
period, the vast changes in the constitution, to which 
both were subsequently unwilling parties, would 
have been fewer in number, and might have been 
introduced with less dangerous rapidity. He found 
less excuse for the Duke of Wellington than for any 
of those who acted with him. The Duke's practical 
good sense and sagacious judgment ought, he 
thought, to have enabled him to see how inevitable 
and pressing was the necessity for conceding the 
claims of the Roman Catholics, and how dangerous 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 199 

it was to resist them till they could be resisted no 
longer. The Duke alone, moreover, was in a posi- 
tion to put aside all considerations of personal and 
party prejudice, whether on the part of the king or 
of minor political personages, and his aid might 
have lessened the labours and anxieties which wore 
out Mr. Canning, might have prolonged his admin- 
istration, and by temperate and wise reforms, such 
as became true disciples of Pitt, have saved the 
country from many risks of hasty and revolutionary 
changes. There were not wanting personal con- 
siderations which should have inclined the Duke to 
such a course. 

" Canning," Mr. Frere said, " was Wellington's 
greatest support in and out of Parliament through- 
out the Peninsular War, for he was one of the few 
who from the very first thoroughly understood the 
importance of the contest ; and he deserved a better 
return for his support at that time than he himself 
afterwards met with, when it was in Wellington's 
power to have aided him." 

Speaking of some of the final reforms which Pitt 
had been forced to lay aside during the stress of 
the French Revolution, and in answer to a question 
whether any knowledge of Mr. Canning's views on 
such subjects had anything to do with the seces- 
sion of so many of the old Tories, Mr. Frere said : — 

" No, I do not think Canning ever talked much 
of such intentions to any but those who were as 
intimate with him as I was. It was personal feeling 
of jealousy of his great ability, which actuated most 
of those who ought, on principle, to have supported 
him. It was the same kind of feeling with which 
Pitt often had to contend. I remember old Lord 

W , the father of the present old Lord, a fine 

specimen of a thoroughgoing old country Tory, 
coming to call on my father to tell him that Pitt 
was out of office, and that Addington had formed 
a ministry. He went through all the members of 



200 MEMOIR OF 

the new cabinet, and rubbing his hands at the end, 
with an evident sense of relief, said, ' Well, thank 
God, we have at last got a ministry without one of 
those confounded men of genius in it ! ' " 

Some years after Canning's death, Mr. Frerewas 
consulted with regard to the inscription to be placed 
on his monument in Westminster Abbey. The 
following is his letter in reply to Mr. Backhouse 
who had sent him the suggested inscriptions with a 
request that if he did not feel quite satisfied with 
any of them, he would send one of his own : — 

"My dear Mr. Backhouse, 

" I WAS much gratified with your kind recol- 
lection of me, upon such an occasion as that which 
gives rise to the letter I have received from you. 
On reading the inscriptions which have been pro- 
posed, particularly the one marked A, it seemed 
to me perfect in its kind. There is nothing to- 
which a friend of Mr. Canning could object, no- 
thing which he could complain of as deficient 
or inadequate, nothing that could give offence to 
either of our political parties. Notwithstanding all 
this, I experienced a feeling like your own ; I 
was not satisfied. But why ? There was nothing 
which I could have wished altered, nothing which 
I could have inserted, nothing to be expunged. I 
confess that I felt bewildered in endeavouring to- 
account for my own sensation of disappointment. 
But perhaps, though perfect in its kind, this inscrip- 
tion is not of a kind suited to the subject. This I 
take to be the case, — and the true solution of your 
feelings, and my own. 

" A character like that of Mr. Canning is not a. 
theme for prose. 

" When Nature produces any thing perfect, or 
nearly approaching to the highest perfection, it 
becomes a model for the highest branches of art. 
In painting or sculpture, a perfect form affords a 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 201 

model for the ideal ; in such cases we are dissatisfied 
with a mere prosaic facsimile. Upon the same 
principle then, since mind can only be delineated by 
language, the highest perfection of mind requires to 
be represented by the higher and more artificial 
form of language — by verse rather than prose. 
Upon this conviction, I have complied with your 
suggestion of ' sending an original composition of 
my own.' Of the principle I have no doubt, but 
am naturally distrustful of the execution ; not only 
from the consideration that sexagenary verses are 
seldom good for much, and that mine are somewhat 
older, but because I have not had time to grow 
cool upon them, and to consider them as I should 
half a year hence. One merit they have, and as 
you see they claim for themselves — that of perfect 
truth. There is not a line for which I could not 
add a voucher. Of the two copies which I have 
sent, one is reduced to the prescribed dimensions. 
They have been printed here at the Government 
press, to save the trouble of transcribing, and to 
enable you (if you do not yourself disapprove of 
them) to send copies to the members of the Com- 
mittee. I should think that the members whom 
you mention would be disposed to coincide with 
me in opinion that the appropriate memorial for 
such a character is verse. He did not belong to 
the prosaic every-day world ; and in order to speak 
of him simply and truly, as he was a most mar- 
vellous and extraordinary person, that form of 
language must be used which has the privilege of 
saying extraordinary things without offence. In a 
prose inscription, I should have been perpetually 
balancing and embarrassed between the desire of 
doing justice to the subject, and the apprehension 
of appearing inflated and exaggerated. Verse is 
under no such restraint, and (while it engages, 
voluntarily and gratuitously, to confine itself to 
truth) is at full liberty to speak the whole truth. 



202 MEMOIR OF 

" I wish I had time to communicate this view 
of the subject in separate letters to the members of 
the Committee, particularly Lord Haddington and 
Lord Morley : the latter is acquainted with Mr. 
Coleridge, to whose decision, as a critic and meta- 
physician, I would willingly submit the question of 
prose or verse. To the same person also, as a poet, 
I should be glad to submit the verses, not being, as 
I said before, able to trust to my own judgment of 
them, or to the impression they have made upon 
not more than three persons, to whom they have 
been communicated. 

" I have sent the longer copy (from which the 
shorter one is reduced to the prescribed dimen- 
sions), because the Committee might be disposed 
to make a different selection, and perhaps a better. 
The first lines, for instance, might be discarded, and 
it would begin with, Approved through life, like the 
most ancient of the Roman epitaphs, Hunc unum 
plurimi consentiunt Romce optimum fuisse virum. 

" Again, the four lines describing his rapidity of 
invention might also be omitted. They were an 
afterthought on my part, as necessary to a com- 
plete enumeration of his extraordinary faculties, 
and the darn, which always marks an ex-post-facto 
insertion, is (though I have, as you see, been trying 
to mend it) still visible at the end. The middle 
line of the last triplet, — When Europe s balance — 
though a good line, is not quite a perfect rhyme ; 
it might therefore be omitted, though I should be 
sorry to lose it. This would reduce the number of 
lines to twenty-five ; and as verse may be inscribed 
in lines more closely together, and in smaller charac- 
ters, than prose, it need not exceed the dimensions 
of the inscription A. 

" In a prose inscription, emphasis and transition 
must be marked by gaps and breaks in a perpen- 
dicular direction : for verse this is unnecessary ; 
or, if a new paragraph is to be marked, it is done 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 203 

by advancing the line in a horizontal direction. 
The character also may be smaller, as you may 
satisfy yourself, if you try to read prose or verse 
by a very imperfect light, or by the known fact that 
critics are able to decipher a metrical inscription 
when in a state of mutilation which would render 
prose illegible. I am glad to hear that the statue 
is worthy of the subject, and of such a master of 
his art as Chantrey. He, I think, would be best 
pleased with an inscription marking the individuality 
of the character which he has represented. Of Mr. 
Canning's political conduct it is surely sufficient to 
say, what can be said of no other man — that he 
was at once the favourite of the sovereign and of 
the people, and that in a time of general peace his 
death was felt throughout the world as an omen 
of general danger. To say this, and to be able to 
say it with truth, is to say every thing. Under all 
the circumstances, it is more than ever could be 
said of any other man. 

" I am inclined to mention a notion which might 
be worth the consideration of the dean and chapter : 
— One of the most striking objects in our church 
here, the great church of St. John, is the magnifi- 
cence of the pavement, consisting of large slabs of 
marble inlaid with mosaic ; each slab being the 
monument of one of the knights or dignitaries 
of the Order. They are all of the same size, with 
some diversity of pattern in each, producing on the 
whole a most harmonious and striking effect. The 
mural monuments are reserved for the most dis- 
tinguished persons (I think for the Grand Masters 
of the Order almost exclusively), whereas in West- 
minster Abbey the pavement remains perfectly 
plain and unornamented, while the walls are 
crowded, rather to the detriment of the appearance 
of the building. In St. John's this is avoided, and 
the whole pavement is like a carpeting of rich 
mosaic. I was thinking that if the long inscription 



.204 MEMOIR OF 

were preferred, it might in this way be placed at 
the foot of the monument, with a border orna- 
mented in any way, or according to any design 
that might be preferred, the letters being inlaid so 
as not to present an uneven surface. Such a stone 
so inlaid would be executed in this country at a 
small expense. 

" As you may perhaps wish to circulate this, I 
enclose a copy in a more legible hand than my 
own. Believe me, 

" My dear Backhouse, 

" Yours ever sincerely, 

" Malta, Oct. 27, 1833." " J. H. FRERE." 

After his return to Malta in 1827, he appears to 
have resumed his former pursuits, but his letters 
refer little to them till March, 1828, when he sent 
his brother Bartle sundry commissions for books 
and periodicals, among which he specifies some of 
the early numbers of the "Westminster Review," 
and says :— - 

"You had proposed to send me a new foreign 
Review, which I should have been glad of ; but, 
instead of it, there has come a quarterly journal of 
sciences and discoveries, and so forth. I do not 
dislike it though I do not understand a quarter 
of it. But I should like to have my foreign Re- 
view also. 

" Pray tell Montgomerie that I am heartily glad 
to hear that he is alive and well, and that the Fred. 
Montgomery in the Commissariate, who is dead, 
happens to be another person. I was not aware 
before of the vital importance which attaches to 
the proper spelling of his name, a mistake in this 
instance might have been fatal to him, and in- 
stances of this kind have been known to occur, 
particularly in France during the Reign of Terror. 
If his friends every where else were alarmed for 
him, his own alarm at seeing his name in the con- 
demned list must have been extreme. 



JOHN HOOK HAM FEE RE. 205 

" I have been doing some Aristophanes lately, 
viz. about 400 lines towards completing the ' Birds.' 
There are about 250 more, which are hardly worth 
finishing, but I think I shall do them." 

His sister, who had been to England and re- 
turned in 1828, accompanied by one of his brother 
Edward's daughters, describes him in June, 1829, 
as well, " and much improved of late in spirits, but 
he has taken for these two days to shutting him- 
self up to read a large parchment folio printed 
in double columns in small type upon yellow 
paper ; in short, a most formidable article, and it 
makes him formidable, for he will scarcely let me 
go near, for fear I should expostulate and want 
him to go out, or at least open his windows." 

He had hardly been roused from his studies by 
the advent of Marshal Maison, the French Minister 
of War, who had visited Malta in the " Didon " 
frigate, with a large staff, many of them after- 
wards distinguished among the first French in- 
vaders of Algiers. 

In August he wrote to his brother Bartle a very 
touching letter on the early death of Lady Orde, 
the wife of a nephew to whom he was much 
attached, and then proceeds to discuss how they 
should divide the expenses of another nephew at 
Haileybury : — 

" Upon the principle upon which the Count of 
Benevento offered to defray the expense of the 
forcible operation to be performed on Dr. Villa- 
lobos, ' y sea a mi costa para que me haya mas 
bien a mi'.' Thus you may go shares with me in 
the merit of learning Hindostanee, of which we shall 
each obtain a portion vicariously 

" I am glad to hear of Montgomerie's welfare. I 
did not send him any commissions to be executed 
at Paris, indeed I am not disposed, with so many 
claims upon me, to throw away money upon mere 
^curiosity and amusement, and I find it much 



206 MEMOIR OF 

cheaper to read the old books that I have got 
already, than to send for new ones. Nevertheless 
you must send me two : Heeren's ' History of 
Greece,' printed by Hurst and Co., and the ' His- 
tory of the Hebrew Commonwealth,' a translation 
from the German, by the same printer. I forgot 
Clinton's ' Fasti Hellenici,' I think printed by 
Rivington, which I should also be glad to have. 
The sheets of the ' Frogs ' are at his service, — I mean 
Montgomerie's, though there has been rather a 
long parenthesis between the pronoun and ante- 
cedent. I am thinking of finishing them, and have 
got over the most impracticable parts, either by 
translating or shewing how and why they cannot 
be translated. 

" I have read Bourienne and agree with him 
(Montgomerie again) in liking it much. He seems 
to have a real zeal for truth. I have also read 
Madame du Barry, which I must think authentic. 

tout) fxiVToi Qav/xacrrov . . . 
rafts yap ilitHv tw Tcavovpyov 
Kara to (pavepov aft' avouocog 

OVK Ml W0JU.YIV SV YI/ALV 

oufte TQ^ixriaai 71 or av. x 

" The drabs of the Court certainly had a right to 
be scandalized and astounded at the appearance of 
a drab so much more stupendous and enormous than 
any that had ever appeared amongst them before. 

" Did not Rose desire a copy [of some of Aristo- 
phanes] for a lady who had fallen in love with them 
and him ? and has he got one ? If not, and the 
lady's longing is not over, let her have one by all 
means." 

He took a deep interest in the passing of the 

1 Aristoph. " Thesmophoriazusae," 520, ed. Bekker : " This 
indeed is the wonder . . . For I could not have believed that 
there ever was any woman among us, who would have dared 
to have said publicly such things so shamelessly." 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 207 

Roman Catholic Relief Bill, which became law in 
April of this year (1829). "It ought," he said, "to 
have passed long before. Had Pitt lived it would 
have been passed directly there was breathing time 
after the great war was ended." A note of a con- 
versation mentioned in a letter from his niece says, 
" He expressed great astonishment at the sudden 
change of opinion in the House of Lords, and added 
that if his mind had not been made up on the sub- 
ject thirty years before, he did not think that any- 
thing that had lately occurred would have convinced 
him." " It had always appeared to him," he said, 
" that there were but two possible courses in the 
present state of things, either excessive severity, or 
a relaxation of all attempts at coercion ; no middle 
course would succeed, and arguing merely on the 
expediency of the measure, without reference to any 
higher motive, it is surely advisable to try the latter. 
It is true, that if the Roman Catholics were to break 
out into actual rebellion, they might nozv be crushed 
at once ; but experience had taught us the effect of 
such repression would only last for a time, and thirty 
years hence a new generation would spring up and 
would have to be quelled in like manner. 

" The ancient Romans, who certainly never acted 
with unnecessary lenity, found themselves obliged 
to admit the other Italian States to the privileges of 
Roman citizens. Supposing we were able to con- 
sult, if not Satan himself, say his namesake and 
imitator, Nicholas Machiavel ; after explaining the 
case to him, he would certainly answer, ' It is not two 
centuries ago since many of your countrymen were 
sent down here, Ireton and several others, who, I was 
told, belonged to the Calvinistic party ; have you 
none of that stuff left ? Cannot you employ one 
sect against the other ? No feeling of remorse 
seemed to come across them — they exterminated. 
This is your only plan. Have you none left whom 
you could trust with the same system ? What have 



208 MEMOIR OF 

you done with the Calvinists ? ' ' Why, to own the 
truth, the Calvinists have become philanthropists. 
In these days, they open Sunday schools, and are 
promoters of negro emancipation, in short, you would 
hardly think they were the same sect.' ' In that 
case you have but one course left, make the Catho- 
lics a part of the State, and consequently make it 
their interest to uphold it.'" 

On September I ith, 1829, he wrote to his brother 
Bartle :— 

" I have finished the ' Frogs,' as far as they are 
capable of being translated, and as soon as they are 
transcribed (by my amanuensis) shall send you over 
a copy, and if you would take the trouble of over- 
looking the press, would print two hundred and fifty 
copies for distribution among the few who are likely 
to care for such a work. 

" In addition to the other works translated from 
[the] German, which I begged you to send me, I 
see one on the Dorians, which I should be glad to 
have. It is translated by a pair of translators (like 
Niebuhr's work), the name of one of whom is 
Tuffnell, which was the name of an old class-fellow 
of mine at Cormick's school. 

" Susan tells me that she has been writing to you, 
so I may spare myself the trouble of recollecting 
whether there is any gossip which you would care 
to hear. Public news there is none. It is a great 
pity the Sultan did not make peace while he might 
have done it with some credit to his new system ; 
now it must be utterly discredited by the event, and 
almost impossible to establish to any purpose after 
such a desengano." 

This year the opera at Valetta had been started 
under new and improved management, greatly to 
the delight of the Malta world. " Mr. Frere," his 
sister writes, " is the only obstinate despiser of this 
opera. If there is a comic opera he may perhaps 
go. This is what he says sometimes with so grave 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 209 

a face that I almost believe he is in earnest 

I wish you " (his brother Bartle,) "were here to read 
over with my brother his translations. He is quite 
himself again since he has taken to that work afresh, 
but he does feel the want of some one who can 
understand the subject of them and correct errors 
with him. He says there are many mistakes that a 
careful review with a friend of competent knowledge 
would enable him to detect. He is, however, deter- 
mined to print what he has done to present to his 
friends. I could almost wish they were to be pub- 
lished for the benefit of such simpletons as myself; 
for, independent of their merit as a faithful render- 
ing of the sense of the original, the lively represen- 
tation of character, with the play of fancy expressed 
in such genuine English, choice phraseology, and 
variety of harmonious measure, makes a very de- 
lightful reading. There is the spirit and life of an 
original composition." 

In a letter of October, 1829, his niece 1 writes, 
" My uncle Frere is not in good spirits about the 
state of things in England, and this makes him 
think of Mr. Canning, and of the loss he was to the 
country ; to give you an idea of his depression at 
times, some one in conversation alluded to the feel- 
ings becoming callous with age ; I said, ' I thought 
people were often mistaken, for that though the 
feelings were frequently blunted by age, yet I 
thought people did not discriminate, and often mis- 
took for want of feeling the resignation which is 
the consequence of being impressed with the short- 
ness of time of separation.' My uncle said, ' You 
are quite right, I have felt it myself; I think twenty 
years ago, Canning's death would have caused 
mine ; as it is, the time seems so short, I do not 
feel it as I otherwise should.' " 



1 Jane Ellinor Arabella, second daughter of his brother 
Edward. Born 1804, died 1872. 

P 



2io MEMOIR OF 

In October of this year he received the intelli- 
gence of the death of his sister the Dowager Lady 
Orde, " the first inroad which death has made upon 
our generation of the family," as he said in writing 
to his brother. 

In the following March his sister, Miss Frere, 
writes that " he has been doing more translations 
from Theognis, prettier, several of them, than the 
first, of which we sent a copy last mail." 

Lady Erroll's failing health and increasing weak- 
ness caused him much anxiety at this time. His 
sister writes in April, " My brother has walked up 
with Lady Erroll's sedan as far as the bastion by 
Lord Hastings' monument, and passed an hour or 
more in sitting there or pacing up and down, but 
with this exception he has scarcely moved out of 
the house for many weeks, nor stirred from his 
dressing-room till the dinner-hour. However, he 
seems now in good health, and much interested 
about the projected emigration from Roydon." 

In July she mentions his having written to 
Rossetti a strong dissuasion against publishing an 
enlarged edition of the " Spirito Antipapale." He 
had also missed, in reading over Rossetti's "Salterio" 
as published, some very good lines upon the ambi- 
tious tyranny of Bonaparte, which had been in the 
MS. and which he wished had been retained, as 
showing what were the author's opinions respecting 
what is to be styled tyranny, and the barrier which 
separates it from the legitimate restraint of kingly 
government. 

The following letters are on the subject of the 
projected emigration from Roydon to which his 
sister alludes. The first is to his brother Temple, 
then Rector of Roydon, and is dated Malta, April 
26, 1830 : — 

" YOU see that I am going to be tedious with 
malice prepense, as I think Burke says somewhere 
upon the same occasion of beginning a letter upon 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 211 

a long sheet of paper. But there is a piece of intelli- 
gence in your letter which coincides with views and 
notions which I have long had in my mind. It 
seems that emigration has begun from Roydon and 
the neighbourhood. It is what I had long wished 
to see, though if I had been there, I should hardly 
have known how to propose or originate a plan, of 
which the immediate result is a relief to the parish, 
accompanied with the expatriation of a part of its 
inhabitants ; yet, since it has arisen spontaneously, 
I much regret that I am not upon the spot, as 
I think I see in it the beginning of what may be of 
infinite advantage to the nation, or might be, at 
least if the scheme were followed up by persons of 
active and practical benevolence. 

" If the current of emigration is directed to New 
York or any of the American States, all I have said 
is nothing to the purpose — the emigrants when they 
arrive will mix with and be lost among the multi- 
tude of the natives, 1 and there will very soon be an 
end of any connection between them and their 
former friends and neighbours at home. But let us 
suppose them to be settled in Canada with which 
we have a constant communication, and where they 
might be settled in a body together. I say then 
that we shall have means of assisting them beyond 
the mere expenses for their outfit (whereas in 
America they would have to shift for themselves) 
and they, in their turn, when they have got over 
their first difficulties, having more land than they 
will be able to cultivate with their own labour, will 
be glad to provide employment for the sons of their 
old acquaintances, who may be sent over to them 
under indentures as farming servants for a certain 
time ; supposing them to be sent out at 14, 1 5, or 16, 
and to be bound for 7, 6, or 5 years, they would at 
the expiration of the time find themselves at liberty 

1 Like salt in water, as Sancho says. — J. H. F. 



212 MEMOIR OF 

to set up for themselves with much more knowledge 
of the country, and other advantages, than the pre- 
sent new settlers. Such a system once established 
(and I think it might be established with great 
ease) would at once deliver us from all the embar- 
rassments arising from want of employment at 
home, and would give a much more respectable 
character to the new colony, connecting it at the 
same time (which is a consideration for the Govern- 
ment) with the mother country, more closely perhaps 
than any other means that could be imagined. 

" Indeed, when I consider the immense tracts of 
unoccupied country which England possesses in 
Canada, in Africa, and in Australia (or Australasia, 
which is it ?) I cannot see why every parish in 
Great Britain might not have its counterpart in one 
or more of these countries ; and when I consider 
the difficulties which were to be overcome in a very 
beneficial scheme, but one of much less ultimate 
importance, I mean that of the Saving Banks, it 
seems to me that nothing is wanting but a portion 
of the same energy to accomplish it — and though I 
am very deficient in this and other practical quali- 
ties, and therefore should not feel confident that I 
could be of much use, yet so much am I in earnest 
that I can assure you that if I were at liberty to 
visit England at this time, I would do so for the 
sake of seeing what was to be done, and what could 
be done in this sample of such a scheme which has 
just sprung up at my own door. 

" There is one branch of industry which I think 
will recommend them — all the Roydon people know 
something of the growth and management of hemp, 
and it is an object with Government to encourage 
the growth of it in Canada, instead of drawing it, as 
we do now, from Russia. You tell me that 130 are 
going from North and South Lopham in a month — 
I hope they will have settled some regular corre- 
spondence with them. I hope you will assign a 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 213 

page in your ' Register ' to the emigration from 
Roydon, recording the names, &c, that they may 
know that they leave a memorial behind them. 
Engage them to write to you and to their friends ; 
we will contrive that the postage shall cost them 
nothing on either side. Let them mention in their 
letters the name of any respectable man in trade, 
through whom any letters or presents may be sent 
to them. Let them take out two maps of the 
country (which I will pay for), and let them return 
one of them with the place where they are settled 
distinctly marked, which I shall be glad to see, and 
hope you will allow it a place on the wall of the 
vestry. I hope they will call the place Roydon. As 
the number of our colonists is only 20, I should 
hope they may keep together and settle together, — 
it would be very useful if the absolutely necessary 
trades, such as blacksmith, carpenter, shoemaker, 
are among the number, and if they are not, it would 
be desirable that any such may be induced to join 
them, and if none such can be found in the parish, 
I would, on my own account, do as much for them 
as the parish does for the others ; — perhaps Fin- 
ningham may furnish some artificer of the kind. If 
the colonization continues it would be useful that a 
lad or two should, upon declaring their willingness 
to go, have a year or two's education given them 
in a blacksmith's or carpenter's shop ; on their 
arrival they would earn sufficient wages, and would 
be better off than any other new settlers. H ave they 
any woman amongst them who could be capable 
of assisting the others in childbirth ? If they have 
not, this is a thing to be thought of, though perhaps 
not to be mentioned ; for nature manages those 
matters better than apprehension represents them. 
" And now let me put in a piece of whim or 
vanity of my own. Put up twenty sovereigns in 
four sealed papers (five in each), and let them be 
given to the mothers of the four first Roydon chil- 



214 MEMOIR OF 

dren that are born in Canada, being intrusted in 
the meanwhile to the most trustworthy person of 
the party ; and I should wish that the children 
might be named after me, or my dear good mother, 
John, or Jane Frere, that it may be recollected that 
there were persons of our name, who had a con- 
siderate kindness for them, which certainly could 
not be more welcome, than under such circum- 
stances in a new country. 

" Of the annoyances and inconveniences which 
they will have to encounter, the one of which I have 
heard the greatest complaint is the quantity of 
gnats, a great deal worse and in greater numbers 
than those that are bred in Roydon Fen ; it would 
not be amiss to take out two or three dozen yards 
of gauze as a defence, which the women, and per- 
haps the men, may be glad to make use of against 
this nuisance. The only diseases are agues, which 
are sometimes tedious, though not by any means 
dangerous, and rarely so violent as to disable a man 
from work ; this is the case all over America, and 
not confined to Canada. They will do well per- 
haps to take a stock of bark, remembering (for we 
have some experience of agues at Roydon), that it 
is not to be used till after the patient has gone 
through a thorough purge, and for this purpose 
they may as well be provided with a large box of 
Mr. Hine's smartest pills. 

" The greatest difficulty for new settlers consists 
in the scarcity of money. Grain is cheap — meat is 
cheap — land may be had at first for nothing, and 
afterwards for next to nothing — fuel costs nothing, 
but the trouble of cutting down the trees. But 
money is scarce, and markets at a long distance 
through roads which Norfolk justices would con- 
sider as inditable. In their own immediate neigh- 
bourhood the bargains among new settlers are, I 
believe, chiefly in the way of barter ; a man gives 
grain in exchange for pigs, or pigs for grain, and 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 21$ 

keeps his money for the purchase of articles from 
England, such as tools, clothes, and household ware. 
Labour indeed is highly paid, but in the beginning 
this cuts two ways, for the labour of building a 
house, for instance (which must be finished before 
the beginning of winter) is one in which the people 
there, who are used to it, are very expert, and 
therefore it is sometimes more useful to hire them, 
than to lose time in attempting a work in which 
new settlers are unaccustomed and awkward. The 
best way, as I have heard, is for a company of 
settlers (such a company, for instance, as is now 
going from Roydon) to content themselves for the 
first winter with living together in a single building, 
after which, they may (when their means are im- 
proved) divide and establish themselves separately, 
receiving from the family who continue to live in 
the original building, such a part of the value as 
may be agreed upon. This is of great importance, 
that they may constitute a community in the first 
instance, however small that community may be ; 
it is the groundwork for everything which may be 
done hereafter. For this purpose then, I will 
advance them fifty pounds, and if, at the end of a 
year, I receive a voucher attesting that they have 
been living together, and are settled together, I will 
again send them the same sum. One of the incon- 
veniences which is felt by new settlers is the impos- 
sibility of supplying the want of various little 
articles of convenience. A woman breaks her tea- 
pot, and the shop perhaps is twenty miles off, — it 
is desirable therefore that all the utensils they take 
out with them should be of durable materials — 
pewter and wood and copper, with as little crockery 
and earthenware as possible, as the breakage in bad 
roads, and afterwards in a confused and crowded 
dwelling, will be very considerable ; — and here is a 
glorious opportunity for the old pewter plates, with 
the arms of Alderman Ironside, which we used to 



2i6 MEMOIR OF 

dine upon in my grandfather's time, and which, I 
suppose, the servants would now disdain. Let 
them be roused to enterprise, and summoned to 
useful and active service ; let them descend from 
the kitchen-shelves, and with a simultaneous and 
enthusiastic impulse, crossing the Atlantic and 
ascending the majestic St. Lawrence, let them 
become the ornament of the rising colony ; when 
they may exclaim with Dido in Virgil, " Urbem 
praeclaram statui : mea mcenia vidi." The appear- 
ance of the Alderman's coat of arms, presented to 
their imagination at their daily meals, will, I trust, 
tend to counteract that tendency to Democracy, 
which is said to be so lamentably prevalent in new 
settlements. I mentioned before the scarcity of 
money, and I stated the case of a broken teapot ; 
now, in addition to the bad roads and the fifteen 
miles, it may happen that the settler may not have 
money to purchase it ; he may have twenty acres 
in wheat and half-a-dozen fat hogs, and at the same 
time may be at a loss to raise a couple of dollars ; 
the fact is, that these things, provisions and pro- 
duce, are not money, nor hardly money's worth, 
they must be carried to a distant and limited 
market, and sold for a low price. This leads to 
another consideration : may not our people con- 
trive to escape from this inconvenience ? I think 
that they may ; or may be easily enabled to do so. 
They understand the growth and management of 
hemp. Some can weave, and the women can spin, 
they would thus produce an article that would be 
saleable at a better price than it would fetch in 
England, and that price in actual money. The 
bale of hempen cloth would not cost as much in 
carrying to market as a sack of wheat, and would 
not be liable to be killed with overdriving in a bad 
road. But it may be thought that settlers in a new 
country will have enough to do without any time 
left for occupations which must be carried on within 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRF RE. 217 

doors, such as spinning, weaving, and hackling — 
this is not the case : during the winter they will 
have a good deal of useless time upon their hands, 
which it will be advisable for them to turn to account. 
This is the general report from all who have given 
us an account of Canada. If therefore a weaver is 
of the party it will be so much the better, if not, I 
would be at any reasonable charge to engage one 
to join them, for if they have not a weaver to work 
it up for them, the market for yarn, I am afraid, 
would be a very poor one. If they are placed on a 
good land for the growth of hemp, we might appren- 
tice a parish boy to a rope-maker, and send out 
cunning artificers in rope and twine, which are 
articles in constant use and demand in an increasing 
country. 

" There are other handicrafts in which an indus- 
trious man might occupy himself, when he is 
debarred from out of doors labour, such as turning 
in wood, a material they have at hand. The 
Tyrolese in their long winters contrive to earn a 
good deal by this branch of industry, they makc 
toys which are sold all over Europe ; but in 
Canada, I imagine, they have not much taste for 
toys, we would make bowls and platters, and 
things of real necessary use, which would find a 
sale among our sensible industrious neighbours. 
But the hour admonishes me to be brief (as some- 
body says), therefore let me recapitulate. 

"Whatever things are necessary for domestic 
use in copper, pewter, or wood (and everything 
that they want should be as far as possible of these 
materials, though iron is safer than copper, and 
ought, indeed, if to be had, to be preferred), all 
these things I will provide at my own charges, 
exclusive of a free donation of the chivalrous and 
heraldic pewter plates before alluded to, and which 
I trust will remain to form an incident in the future 
novels of a Canadian Mr. Cooper. 



218 MEMOIR OF 

" Moreover, a supply of bark and of a sufficient 
number of cathartic pills ; likewise three or four 
dozen yards of gauze. Moreover, a venture of 
hempen cloth, the produce of Roydon, to be sold 
as a specimen of our manufacturing industry, and 
of that which they may establish with greater 
advantage, when its incomparable durable qualities 
are known and approved. This venture to be 
about ten pounds, or rather more than less, but if 
there should be aught of it in the market, you may 
go as far as twenty. 

" Fifthly (I think it is), fifty pounds in hand for 
the expenses of building a dwelling sufficient to 
shelter them for the first winter. 

" Sixthly, fifty pounds to be paid a year hence. 

" Seventhly, the twenty sovereigns in four packets, 
as before mentioned. 

" Eighthly, Farewell dinner at the ' White Hart,' 
for the whole party, with a sovereign under each 
plate. 

" The other things which are contingent, such as 
engaging persons of necessary trades, I leave, as 
indeed I must leave much of what I have men- 
tioned (and in which you may happen to know that 
I am wrong) to your judgment. But do not think 
that I over-estimate the advantage of the plan if it 
can be accomplished, or that I shall grudge the 
expense (whatever it may be) of accomplishing it. 
We are providing a regular outlet for superfluous 
and unemployed labour, instead of suffering it to 
accumulate until it becomes burdensome and dan- 
gerous, and then sending out droves of people un- 
connected and undisciplined, to live like white Ma- 
roons in the woods — this seems our present course. 

" Let them not forget to take a sample of hemp 
seed. I see that in my recapitulation I have not 
mentioned the two maps." 1 

' On the subject of this letter, Mr. Frere, in a pencil note 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. aiQ 

u April yx 

" TELL Lady Margaret (Cameron) that my lady- 
has been ill, but is now much better ; we are under 
no uneasiness about her." 

The following letter was written while the French 
invasion of Algeria was impending, and was sent 
by one of the steam-packets started to run every 
six weeks from Falmouth to Cadiz, Gibraltar, 
Malta, and Corfu. These were the first regular 
steam-packets which ran to the Mediterranean : — 

" Malta, April 29th, 1830. 

" My dear Bartle, 

"The steamer from England brought me your 

made by him at this time in a blank page of a volume of Rees' 
" Encyclopaedia," wrote — " In a new country labour is of all 
things the dearest, and time the most valuable, therefore 
whatever time and labour can be saved by bringing out neces- 
sary objects ready made is so much gain ; clothes, therefore, 
shoes, &c, should be taken out in sufficient quantities, and, 
as what is destroyed cannot easily be replaced, everything 
should be as durable as possible, and on this principle pewter 
should be preferred to crockery. Many objects which domestic 
industry could supply, and which consume invaluable time in 
a new settlement might, by the application of a little ingenuity, 
be comprised in a portable form ; even the frame of a house, 
that is, the supports and the skeleton of the roof, with its wall 
plates, might be made of iron so contrived with hinges and 
screws as to be divided in portable packages and easily 
put together. I say portable packages, because it seldom 
happens that the best situations are to be found in the im- 
mediate neighbourhood of the sea, and we must take into 
account the want of roads and bridges — the situation should 
be so chosen as to combine health and fertility with the con- 
venience of fresh water and fuel, for the last must not be lost 
sight of. With this view, or upon the principle of securing a 
future return with the least possible expenditure of labour, it 
might not be amiss when the first difficulties of lodging and 
subsistence are overcome, to employ the plough for a day or 
two in scratching furrows to be sown with the seeds of fruit- 
bearing trees, including the Glandiferas, which in future 
would afford food for animals and give a return without trouble 
or labour. There was a time in England when a wood was 
estimated not by reference to the value of the timber, but the 
number of animals it would fatten— Silva centum porcorum . ' 



220 MEMOIR OF 

packet yesterday, and to-day a steamer from Corfu, 
going to England, will take this ; but it starts at 
twelve, which hardly gives me time to say or deter- 
mine any of the questions which you suggest re- 
specting the ' Frogs.' 

" I am vexed to think that 1,500 sheets of that 
nice paper should have been thrown away upon an 
imperfect copy. However, the punctuation is de- 
testable ; there is hardly such a thing as a semi- 
colon, or anything but commas throughout. It is 
an art which I never learnt. Dear Canning had a 
little vanity about it, and was never better pleased 
than when he was correcting a proof-sheet, and 
putting the proper stops ; so that in that, and in 
many other things, I never felt the necessity of 
correcting my own deficiencies. Upon the whole, 
if there is enough of the same paper to print the 
whole, I think I would send back the copy, which I 
have now received, with, perhaps, some little altera- 
tions and a less faulty punctuation ; otherwise, 
copies corrected by hand, which might be done 
neatly and without so great an expense, would 
agree well enough with the character of non-publi- 
cation, which I am anxious to preserve, and which 
is expressed in the pococuranteism of the preface. 
I do not mean to add my name, except in writing 
' with Mr. Frere's comp ts - ' to the persons they are 
sent to. If I should allow any copies to be sold at 
the universities, which, perhaps, I may do, the cir- 
cumstance of the name would make it a publication, 
therefore it is best to omit it. 

" But I will say no more upon this head till the 
return of your steam-packet from Corfu ; by that 
time I shall have got a standing writing-desk in- 
stead of scribbling with a folio on my knees for 
want of one, as I am now doing. I have, in the 
meantime, a scheme of more urgency in point of 
time, and in which, I think, you may be as kindly 
disposed to co-operate. 



JOHN HO OK If AM FRERE. 221 

" I think you know Mr. Hay of the Colonial 
Office ? if not, he is a person whom I like very 
much, and who, I believe, likes me, as I have 
endeavoured to keep up his liking by sending him 
some little amusing works in clay, representing 
Maltese families and manners. Well, I received 
from Temple an account of a projected emigration 
from Roydon. The letter which I send to him in 
answer I send open to Mr. Hay, desiring him, if he 
pleases, to read it, and then to frank and forward 
it. A copy of this letter is here enclosed ; but as 
it will arrive before the original, which was sent by 
the old sailing packet, I will thank you to dispatch 
it to Temple, that it may have a better chance of 
arriving in time. I will not trouble Hay with 
receiving the copy first, and then the original. 
Official people do not like to be overbored with 
the volunteer crotchets of individuals ; and Canada, 
I believe, is not on Hay's side of the office, nor am 
I acquainted with his colleague ; but I have written 
to him (Hay) on the subject, hoping that he may 
assist, and telling him that I wish the people, of 
whom I give a very good character, to be kept 
together, and to be located on land that will serve 
for hemp, and that, if they are formed into a parish, 
I will settle a stipend for the priest, that is, if I live 
four or five years longer. I shall, of course, expect 
that the advowson shall be mine, or given to the 
person I appoint, and that the parson shall have 
from Government a sufficient allotment of land. I 
will also give something towards building a log- 
house church, which may stand, perhaps, 1,000 
years. There is such a one now somewhere in 
Kent. Who knows but Master John, whom we are 
sending to college, and who ought to make an 
excellent clergyman, might be settled in this way, 
and become the squire parson and patriarch of 
New Roydon. Unless something of this kind is 
done — if, now that the spirit of enterprise has 



222 MEMOIR OF 

reached the lower ranks, the gentry and persons of 
education do not put themselves at the head of it, 
they are only getting rid of a present inconvenience, 
with the prospect of creating other evils in future. 

" Our present emigration is a mere secession of 
the plebeians, and we cannot flatter ourselves that 
their mons sacer in Canada, or elsewhere, will long 
continue friendly or submissive. Our great error 
(an error of omission) was at the end of the war. 
There were then hundreds of young gentlemen, 
inured to hardships and looking out for some pro- 
vision or employment, who would have contributed 
a gentry in the new colonies. The multiplication 
of younger brothers may do much, if accompanied 
with a reduction of those establishments in which 
they now roost themselves. But the midshipmen 
and lieutenants who had been keeping a winter's 
blockade of Brest and Toulon, and the lieutenants 
and ensigns who had starved and fought through 
the Peninsula, would have made better backwoods- 
men than our present growth of destitute dandies. 

" I am comical to be talking about plebeians, 
when we are, in fact, nothing else ourselves, save 
and except our ancient and undoubted right to the 
two flanches and leopards' faces ; which flanches, 
as heralds say, typify flitches of bacon, 1 signifying 
that the original grantee was a thriving churl. I 
do not believe them ; but, be that as it may, I 
think such as we are, people of our class are neces- 
sary in new colonies, and perhaps as useful in this 
country as the great [flirting] and game-preserving 
establishments, with their elopements and battues. 

" To have done with nonsense — 

" If, from what you learn from Temple, the letter 
which he receives from me does not arrive too late, 
and if the Roydonians are not already departed, 

1 This, as far as I can learn, is a perfectly original heraldic 
theory ; Vide anted, p. 4. 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 223 

will you call upon Hay, and show him the copy of 
the letter which I wrote to Temple, or, in any way 
which your diplomacy may suggest, endeavour to 
procure through him as favourable a recommenda- 
tion for these honest people as possible ; even if 
they should be gone, it would not perhaps be too 
late to accomplish the objects which I wish, of 
keeping them together, placing them on hemp 
land, and sending the money for their first habita- 
tion ; and for the women, perhaps, too, the utensils 
of pewter, &c, might be sent and consigned for 
their use. You will judge that I am anxious about 
this, when this time and the last I have written 
upon nothing else." 

He then gives his brother a commission for a 
number of locks with a master key : — 

" I wonder that I should have gone on so long 
without them, considering the fuss and trouble they 
will save me. There is no Maltese lock which will 
not open with a crooked nail, and I have recourse 
to all sorts of expedients, to put things out of the 
way. 

" Mr. John Frere, of the ' Rattlesnake ' [his 
nephew], is just come in from Algiers. They had 
gone to bring away the consul's wife and family ; 
but the Dey, it seems, being desperate, has refused 
to let them go ; so the admiral is going to try if he 
can prevail. It seems a difficult negotiation, for 
you can threaten nothing more than they are 
already prepared for. 

" My lady has been very unwell, but is getting 
better. I positively forbid her writing, for her ill- 
ness was brought on, I believe, mainly by over- 
exertion in scribbling late at night. 

" All that I have said about Algiers is a first 
report, and false, as usual. The second is, that the 
French object to our going through their blockade 
. . . so the admiral is going to negotiate with 
the French ; this is the present version. 



224 MEMOIR OF 

" In the meanwhile Jane is going to see her 
brother at the Parlatorio, and I continue scribbling 
in my nightgown ; but I will not scribble any- 
more, but shave and dress, for the departure of 
the steamer is deferred in consequence of this intel- 
ligence." 

" Malta, May %th, 1830. 

" My dear Brother, 

" This letter is begun by candlelight. ' Ante 
diem librum cum lumine,' as the poet 1 says. I 
wish I had kept a copy of my last, for I cannot 
recollect it so perfectly as not to feel in doubt that 
something may have been omitted which I should 
have wished to have said upon the subject of the 
Roydon emigrants. I forget whether I mentioned 
that you might show it to Mr. Hay, who would 
feel an interest even in the unofficial part of it, of and 
concerning the ' Frogs.' The ' Frogs ' above men- 
tioned have not advanced so rapidly as you wished 
in your last letter, and as I intended at the time I 
received it. The continued illness of my poor lady 
had left my mind incapable of doing anything but 
what was merely mechanical. . . . We have 
been for many days nearly in the same state as you 
may remember us to have been in when we left Grove 
House. We are, however, at present decidedly on 
the mending hand, and have been so for three or 
four days past, and I have little doubt but that, 
with the means of management that we have, and 
our experience of her complaint, together with the 
season of the year, which is always favourable to 
her, we shall see her again before long restored to a 
state of tolerable health and comfort ; but in the 
meantime constant attention is necessary, and I am 
not sufficiently at leisure to study the mysteries of 
punctuation. 

" As with printing 500 there will be more copies 

1 Hor. I. EpisL ii. 35. 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 225 

than can be wanted for distribution among my 
friends or acquaintance or literary persons whom I 
know of, I shall send a parcel to Cambridge to be 
sold by a bookseller, just like the verses of any 
ordinary poet, the profits whereof, being paid into 
William's hand, will form my contribution in be- 
half of his protege. . . . 

" Did you not say, or was it George, that you 
should like to be the custode of my Sicilian medals, 
which are now in said Hoare's hands ? I shall 
send him an order to deliver them to you, on your 
applying in person and giving a receipt, which he 
will forward to me. It is always right to be prig- 
gish and particular with one's banker. I have got 
a gold medal, of the size of the second large gold 
one. This new one is in profile ; the second is 
obverse, as we call it; so that, if I were in England, 
I might address myself in the language of the 
Abbate Calcagni to Lord Northwick — 

" ' E voi che in questa laureata Metropoli del 
Britannico Unito Impero, dove la Numismatica e 
stata ed e in tanto pregio, e donde sorgono 
Nummilogi Genii sublimi, siete pur felice di una 
Greco-Sicula- collezione, a nissuna di quante se 
ne vedano fuor di Sicilia minore.' 1 

" Now this is what I call true eloquence, and, if 
English people think otherwise, it cannot be helped ; 
but certainly the Italians ought to know best. 

" By the bye, I see there is a quarto book, I 
think with plates, an historical account of medals, 
lately published, which is highly spoken of. I can- 
not recollect the name or find the advertisement at 
this moment ; but your bookseller, probably, will 
know it, and I should be glad if he would send it 

1 " ZV Re di Siracusa, Finzia e Liparo non ricordati dalle 
Slor/e, riconosciuti or a con le Monet e dnl Cav. M. Calcagni.' 
Palermo, 1808, torn. i. p. 23. Mr. Frere evidently quoted the 
passage from memory. 

Q 



226 MEMOIR OF 

me. I shall want, also, the following : — ' Identity 
of Druidical and Hebrew Worship,' by Nimmo, 
Gower Street ; ' Services of Mr. Dawson,' by Smith, 
Elder & Co. ; ' Veracity of Five Books of Moses,' 
Rev. J. Blunt, printed, I think, at Cambridge. Your 
said bookseller has sent me in (five months ago) an 
account in which there are articles of which I know 
nothing, not even the names of the books ; others 
of which I have a distinct recollection that they were 
paid for at the time, being little classics which I 
bought for my nephews. Nevertheless, as I do not 
think I should better myself by changing, and as it 
will be more convenient for you if you will take the 
trouble of my commissions in this kind ; moreover, 
as he is a Norfolk man, and not a Scotchman, we 
will remain as we are. . . . 

"We are still in town, but the weather is so fine that 
I regret our present inability to move to the Pieta. 

" Well, my dear Bartle, I must write to other 
people as well as you, though they consist mainly 
of commissions ; yet you see there are two sheets 
fairly counted, and if that is not enough, I will send 
you a third, just to show that Aristophanes has 
been in my thoughts, in spite of impediments and 
disturbances." 

The following, intended as an introduction to 
the translation of the " Frogs," was inclosed in the 
foregoing letter : — 

" The writer of this translation having for many 
years past found an unfailing source of amusement 
and occupation in the Comedies of Aristophanes, 
has felt unwilling that the result of much time and 
attention — greater, probably, than any other person 
is ever likely to bestow upon such a subject — 
should be left liable to the common destiny of 
posthumous manuscripts ; a small edition, there- 
fore, of one of the translated comedies has been 
printed, sufficient for distribution among the nar- 
rowed circle of his surviving friends ; sufficient, 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 227 

also, to serve as a token of respect to those learned 
persons whose advice and assistance, if it had been 
attainable at an earlier period, might have en- 
couraged him to venture on a more extended pub- 
lication. 

" With respect to the rising race of scholars, with 
whom, he regrets, he has had no opportunity of 
becoming acquainted, but amongst whom there may 
possibly have arisen some feeling of curiosity re- 
specting an attempt which, whether right or wrong, 
has been undertaken upon a new principle, no 
method of distribution has appeared more obvious 
or less invidious than that of sending the remaining 
copies to be sold by a bookseller at the university 
to which he has the honour to belong." 

In the summer of 1830 he made a yachting trip 
to Marseilles, in the hope of benefiting Lady Er- 
roll's health. The following is from a letter to his 
brother Bartle written in September, after their 
return to Malta : — 

" I have sent the 'Frogs.' You have, I think, or 
had at Hampstead, a more complete copy of the 
' Birds' than I have here. I should be glad to have 
a copy of it taken, and sent out here, or the original 
sent out here, leaving a copy behind in case of acci- 
dents. It is not perfect, nor is the play finished, 
but I have done some more of it. I do not wish 
any distribution to be made of the Frogs, till I can 
send something by way of preface (extracted from 
my own review of Mitchell's translation). 

" But I have never told you how we were at Mar- 
seilles on the day the ordonnance came down, and 
the newspapers were stopped. How afraid every- 
body was to say a word. This was on Saturday 
the 31st of July. On the Sunday and Monday it 
was known that there was resistance ; so, on the 
Monday, the 'jeunes gens' of the Athenaeum and 
the merchants' clerks, &c, were in meeting against 
the Prefect, but the common people took no part. 



228 MEMOIR OF 

Why should they ? On the Tuesday the Telegraph 
proclamation (of the Duke of Orleans as Lieutenant- 
General) which had arrived the evening before, was 
published, and we set sail for Malta. Last time it 
took nine years for the Revolution to reach 
Malta from Paris. How long will it take this 
time?" 

Later in the year his sister describes him as en- 
joying, as usual, the society of his friends Dr. Davy 
and Mr. Nugent, and much interested in the accounts 
he had received of the extraordinary talent deve- 
loped by a brother of Mrs. Davy's who had been 
brought up to the law, but who had shown an irre- 
sistible bent for the fine arts, especially sculpture. 
He had again become seriously alarmed at the state 
of his wife's health, and in December he writes to 
his brother Bartle : — 

" I have no notes to ' Frogs' to send you this time. 
My lady's illness has in fact quite unhinged me. 
She is now out of immediate danger, but deplorably 
and distressingly weak. Will you send me a copy 
of the 'Birds?' I have almost finished them, but 
I have no copy of the part which is in England. 

" I am so pressed for time that I must desire you 
to thank George for his letter. I perfectly agree 
with his view of the state of things. The burthen 
of taxation must be shifted on to the shoulders of 
the proprietors. Till that is done, we have no right 
to tax the necessities of the commonalty." 

In January, 183 1, his anxieties regarding his wife 
were terminated ; Lady Erroll passed away after a 
brief interval of sufferings hardly more acute than 
those to which she had been long subject. The 
removal of one who had been for so many years the 
object of constant affectionate thought and devoted 
care, left a terrible void. He had injured his back 
by a fall a few days before, and could only attend 
the funeral by being carried in a chair to the boat 
which took him across the Quarantine Harbour. 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 229 

The letters of those around him give a vivid picture 
of his mental agony, aggravated by severe bodily 
pain. The grave was in the old garrison burial- 
ground, in a bastion of the outworks of Valetta, 
overlooking the Quarantine Harbour, and in sight 
of Mr. Frere's residence at the Pieta. He had 
desired that the funeral should be as private as 
possible, and his wishes were respected, his sister 
and his two nieces being his only companions ; but 
an old priest relates how six thousand of the poor 
Maltese, to whom Lady Erroll had been greatly 
endeared by her charities, came to visit the grave 
as a mark of respect, retiring to a distance as the 
funeral approached. 

His sister, writing a fortnight afterwards to his 
brother Bartle, tells him that a copy he had made 
of some portion of the Aristophanes which had been 
left in England, had arrived most opportunely to 
divert Mr. Frere's mind from dwelling on his own 
grief. 

" He is more and more in admiration of your 
work. ' Not less than 1,300 lines written out in 
his own hand — that is something like a brother ! ' 
said he to me this morning, and I set about reck- 
oning for him what he had done in addition, and 
find there are near 900 lines which he says shall be 
copied out from the margin of the copy of Aristo- 
phanes which you gave him." 

Three months later he writes to his brother : — 

" In the list of Leipsic publications 1 see ' De 
Babyloniis Aristophanis Commentatio.' I should 
wish very much to have it, in order to see whether 
it agrees with my own conjecture, viz., that it was a 
sort of reductio ad absurdum of the Athenian schemes 
of imperial policy exemplified in the supposed case 
of their utmost possible or impossible success. 

" With respect to the ' Frogs,' I wish to have the 
text printed now that the types are set up, and not 
to be at the expense of keeping them standing. 



230 MEMOIR OF 

The notes will follow, and be printed separately at 
the end. 

" I want to say a word about our nephew George. 
He said to me (in a postscript) that he should like 
to emigrate. If it is a fixed and serious wish, and 
one which his father would approve of, I should be 
willing to contribute to it to the best of my ability, 
since no one can tell what the state of Europe or 
of England may be. I should not be sorry to see 
one of the family established with a house and a 
barn, and a few hundred acres, in a quiet quarter 
of the globe, and he might find recruits to accom- 
pany him from Roydon and Finningham. In his 
office, 1 it occurs to me that by an effort he might 
distinguish himself and become indispensable. 
There is no one there now who can translate a 
Russian Gazette. If he could acquire this accom- 
plishment, it would make him known and talked of 
as a Frere ought to be, and might lead to other 
things, as being sent out secretary to an ambassador 
there. It is a language which will ultimately be 
considered as indispensable in that office, and the 
first (whoever he is) that acquires it, will be thought 
to have great merit. I am sorry to see by the 
paper so poor an account of Lord Holland. I hear 
nothing else of him, but the symptoms seem very 
fearful ones." 

The subject of emigration still continued to oc- 
cupy much of his thoughts ; his sister writes of him, 
" It is very strange that my brother in the midst of 
his first grief, looking over a book of Mr. Wilmot 
Horton's, which he sent out to him here, in which 
there is much of attack of Mr. Sadler upon the 
subject of emigration, set about writing some re- 
marks which are very forcible, in his peculiar style 
of grave irony and humour ; they are scratched at 
the end of the book ; and in return for my reading 



The Foreign Office. 



JOHN HOOKHAM ERE RE. 231 

to him one night the ' Remedies of Pauperism,' in 
hopes of putting him to sleep, he made me laugh 
afterwards with his observations." 

In May she describes him as " very busy studying 
Hebrew. When he has tried his eyes over-much 
with the vowel points, he learns some by heart. 
This keeps him in cheerful, even spirits." 

On the 5th of August, 1831, he wrote to his 
brother Bartle : — 

" I send an advertisement to be prefixed to 
the ' Frogs,' which I hope you will not object to ; 
I send a title-page also, which I do not like so 
well. Perhaps it would be better to put ' The Frogs 
of Aristophanes, translated in English verse,' adding 
the motto from Virgil's ' Catalecta.' 1 

" We are very well here, but hotter than anything 
ever was. Our Governor has left us on leave, which 
is a great loss to us. 

" Being rather out of the reach of moral volcanoes, 
we are occupied with a natural unmetaphorical one 
in the neighbourhood, i. e. about 120 miles off, 2 
which I think too far for visiting distance. — As little 
am I disposed to visit the moral volcanoes. Have 
you seen what Niebuhr says ? I believe it has been 
the feeling and apprehension of great numbers. 
It is one of the subjects which I can hardly bear 
to think of ; therefore, the less is said about it the 
better." 

The "Advertisement" inclosed in the above letter 
was as follows. It is slightly altered from that 
given at p. 226 : — 

" The first forty pages of the following translation 
having been printed above ten years ago, had re- 



1 xi. 62, 63. 

s Graham's Island, which rose from the sea between Malta 
and Sicily, and after a few months sank again. A description 
of it by Sir Walter Scott, who landed on it in Nov. 1831, will 
be found in " Lockhart's Life of Scott," vol. x. chap, lxxxi. 



232 



MEMOIR OF 



mained since that time as an incumbrance in the 
printer's warehouse. It became necessary therefore 
either to condemn them at once as waste paper, or 
to distribute them in an imperfect state to those 
friends to whom complete copies had been pro- 
mised ; or finally (under the disadvantages of ab- 
sence and distance, and a growing indifference to 
the task) to finish the printing of the entire play. 
This has been done, and in addition to the narrowed 
circle of the author's private friends, copies will be 
presented to those learned persons, whose advice 
and assistance, if it had been attainable at an earlier 
period, might perhaps have justified a more extended 
publication. With respect to the rising race of 
scholars with whom he has had no opportunity of 
being acquainted, no method of distribution has 
appeared more obvious or less invidious, than that 
of sending the remaining copies to be disposed of 
by a bookseller at the University to which he has 
the honour to belong. 

" This play was exhibited during the last crisis 
of Athenian power and ascendancy (at a time when 
peace upon equal and honourable terms was still 
attainable) after the victory at Arginusae and before 
the final and irrevocable defeat at .^Egospotamos." 

" Title page : — 

" The ' Frogs of Aristophanes,' being an attempt 
to convey to the English reader, some notion of the 
comic design and characteristic humour of the ori- 
ginal. 

' Si patrio Graios carmine adire sales 
Possumus : optatis plus jam procedimus ipsis.' 

Virgil. 

Later in the year he was much occupied by a 
reference from Mr. Bandinell on the choice of an 
epitaph on Mr. Canning ; with what result has been 
already described. 1 

1 Vide anted, p. 200. 



JOHN HOOK HAM FRERE. 23 3. 

On November 3rd, 1831, he wrote to his brother 
Bartle in reply to a question as to the proper time 
for a young man to go to college : — 

" I do not know what opinion you expected me 

to give about , or why I should give an opinion, 

when others as well able to judge are on the spot. 
I only think, in general, that the longer a man's 
education lasts, and consequently the later he goes 
to college, the better chance he has of distinguishing 
himself, both at college or afterwards, therefore I am 
very well satisfied with hearing that his father has 
decided on his passing a year at the King's Col- 
lege. 

" I will send you positively by the next packet, 
either by notes or by an extract from my review of 
Mitchell's ' Aristophanes,' enough to fill up the 
sheet. For it must be very hard to keep the printer 
so long with his press standing. 

" The letter (which I thank you for having ma- 
naged with your usual diplomacy) was to show the 
true grounds of the present discontents, which are 
wholly fiscal : the removal of them would, I am per- 
suaded, have obviated any call for Reform, and 
would now obviate, as I conceive, any dangerous 
discontent at its rejection. I have been writing 
by candle-light, and it is now sunrise. So, good 
morning." 

In November of this year he had the pleasure of 
welcoming Sir Walter Scott to Malta. 

They had been friends since their first meeting 
in 1806, when Scott wrote from London to Ellis, 
" I met with your friend Mr. Canning in town, and 
claimed his acquaintance as a friend of yours, and 
had my claim allowed ; also Mr. Frere, — both de- 
lightful companions, far too good for politics and for 
winning and losing places. When I say I was more 
pleased with their society than I thought had been 
possible on so short an acquaintance, I pay them a 
very trifling compliment and myself a very great 



234 MEMOIR OF 

one." Similarity of tastes and feelings, and of 
opinions on many important questions of public 
policy, had made them closer friends than might 
have been expected from the infrequency of their 
personal intercourse. 

Many anecdotes of this their last meeting are to 
be found in Lockhart's Life of Scott, and in the 
quotations from Mrs. Davy's journals, which relate 
to Sir Walter's stay at Malta. 

After describing her first visit to Sir Walter in 
Quarantine, Mrs. Davy says, "our visit was short, 
and we left Mr. Frere with him at the bar on our 
departure. He came daily to see his friend, and 
passed more of his quarantine time with him than 
any one else. We were told that between Mr. 
Frere's habitual absence of mind and Sir Walter's 
natural Scotch desire to shake hands with him at 
every meeting, it required all the vigilance of the 
attendant genii of the place to prevent Mr. F. from 
being put into quarantine along with him." 

Mrs. Davy describes the sad change which had 
come over Sir Walter's appearance since his para- 
lytic attack in the preceding April, but Sir Walter 
was " astonished " we are told, in a letter from 
Mr. Frere's niece, " at his old friend looking so well 
and appearing so strong." 

Miss Frere writes on the 3rd December : — 

" My brother has been taking Sir W. Scott out 
to drive, to effect which he had to come back to 
St. Antonio in the rain. He tells me Sir W. ap- 
peared very comfortable, not fatigued by the honour 
and attentions paid him here. You would not per- 
haps guess, that the United Service, army and navy, 
devised giving a ball on Thursday to Sir Walter. 
He attended, and had the good nature to stay three 
hours, and leave a general persuasion that he was 
very much amused. Some of the performance was 
indeed laughable enough. . . . Sir Walter's going 
was as great a compliment as he could pay the 



JOHN HO OK II AM FRERE. 235 

good people concerned in this ball, for he had a 
flight of many stairs to ascend, and to sit up long 
after his usual hour, which is from eight to nine 
o'clock, and his strength is so fluctuating that he 
sometimes is quite wearied with conversing or being 
in company half an hour ; so says his daughter ; 
I think however he must be improved in this re- 
spect, since he has been in Malta, for he has been 
dining out three times in the course of this week — 
that is, since he has been out of Quarantine. He 
had apartments at Fort Manuel, instead of the usual 
Lazaretto, where the view is more open and cheerful, 
and the weather was perfection, and he said he felt 
the good effects of the climate so much he was in- 
clined to stay the winter instead of going to Naples." 

The Reform Bill was, at this time, the ge- 
neral topic of greatest interest in the news from 
England. Some one asked Mr. Frere his opinion 
of the political banquets, Reform and Anti-Reform, 
which the newspapers were discussing, " would they 
do any real good ?" He was not at the moment 
inclined for any serious political discussion, and 
replied, " I have no doubt that it would do great 
good, if every man in England would ask himself 
to dinner, drink his own health, and resolve to re- 
form himself." 

On the 4th December, Mrs. Davy writes, " On 
joining us in the drawing-room after dinner, Sir 
Walter was very animated, spoke much of Mr. Frere, 
and of his remarkable success, when quite a boy, in 
the translation of a Saxon ballad. This led him to 
ballads in general, and he gravely lamented his 
friend Mr. Frere's heresy in not esteeming highly 
enough that of ' Hardyknute.' He admitted that it 
was not a veritable old ballad, but 'just old enough,' 
and a noble imitation of the best style. In speaking 
of Mr. Frere's translations, he repeated a pretty 
long passage from his version of one of the ' Ro- 
mances of the Cid,' and seemed to enjoy a spirited 



236 MEMOIR OF 

charge of the knights therein described as much as 
he could have done in his best days, placing his 
walking-stick in rest like a lance, to ' suit the action 
to the word.' " 

Miss Scott says, she has not seen " him so 
animated, so like himself since he came to Malta." 

On the 9th, Mrs. Davy describes a drive she 
took with Sir Walter "to St. Antonio, a garden 
residence of the Governor's, about two miles from 
Valetta, then occupied by Mr. Frere." . . . Sir 
Walter " snuffed with great delight the perfume of 
the new oranges, which hung thickly on each side 
as we drove up the long avenue to the court-yard, 
or stable-yard rather, of St. Antonio — and was 
amused at the Maltese untidiness of two or three 
pigs running at large under the trees. ' That's just 
like my friend Frere,' he said, ' quite content to let 
pigs run about in his orange-groves.' We did not 
find Mr. Frere at home, and therefore drove back 
without waiting. ... On Friday, December 
10th, he went in company with Mr. Frere to see 
Cittavecchia. I drove over with a lady friend to 
meet them at the church there. Sir Walter seemed 
pleased with what was shown him, but was not 
animated." 

An anecdote connected with this last drive illus- 
trates Sir Walter's habitual kindliness. When 
they called at the Pieta, Mr. Frere's young mid- 
shipman nephew, John, who was in the house 
slowly recovering from a Morea fever, had begged 
to be carried from his bed to the window that he 
might see Sir Walter as he stopped in the carriage. 
Sir Walter, on being afterwards told of this, ex- 
pressed great regret that he had not heard it 
sooner : " If I had known in time I would have 
tried to hobble up stairs to see him." 

Sir Walter re-embarked on board the" Barham" on 
the 14th of December, and sailed for Naples. On 
the 3rd of January following (1832) Miss Frere 
writes : — 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 237 

" The dull, rainy, chilly weather is not enlivening, 
we are here without society,, and the season brings 
with it some depressing recollections. My brother 
however is well, and when we move, as I hope we 
shall do next week to warmer quarters, and more 
within reach of the inhabitants of Valetta, we shall 
proceed as usual." ..." Sir Walter Scott got 
pratique at Naples on Christmas Day, after only a 
few days' quarantine, the 'Barham' is returned this 
morning. It was expected there would be long 
quarantine, thirty days at least, and in that case he 
would probably have returned here. My brother 
enjoyed much his being here, and scarcely missed 
going in daily to Valetta, to take him out to 
drive." 

On the 2nd February, 1832, he wrote to his 
brother Bartle : — 

" I must again forfeit my word to you and the 
printer, though you might, I think, taking the 
Review of Mitchell's ' Aristophanes,' pick out 
enough to fill the miserable imperfect sheets. 
There are one or two precious pieces of pedantic 
pleasantry (such as probo alitcr) in conformity with 
the common style of Reviews, which of course you 
would strike out, as also all criticism in disparage- 
ment (there is as little as I could put in conscience), 
of Mr. Mitchell's performance ; if you do not, I 
must, between the time of the arrival of the next 
packet and its departure, do the thing myself. 

" The fact is, my dear Bartle, that I am so 
immersed in Hebrew, and find so much exertion 
and time necessary, to keep up what I have already, 
and to acquire daily a little more, and having got a 
slight hold upon the language, I am so apprehen- 
sive that if I were to leave go of it for a short time 
it would escape me altogether, that I allow myself 
no other pursuit or amusement or avocation that I 
can possibly avoid. You would therefore do me a 
great kindness if you could save me this trouble, 



238 MEMOIR OF 

and you, who were a Reviewer yourself so many 
years ago, could not fail to do it well. 

" I hope I am not invading your province in 
providing for the outfit of your godson, but I shall 
be ready to give way to you ; or admit you into a 
partnership in the speculation if you express a wish 
to that effect." 

" P.S. — I have.opened my letter again for a com- 
mission with which I must trouble you, it is to send 
me half-a-dozen handsomely bound classics as pre- 
sents for lads here, who have been writing compli- 
mentary Latin verses to Sir W. Scott, at my 
instigation. Two of them or three should be hand- 
somer than the others. Horaces would do. The 
whole not to exceed ^"20." 

In March, 1832, his sister wrote, referring to his 
Hebrew studies : — 

" I meant to have copied out and sent you an 
essay of my brother's upon the song of Deborah, 
but it is not quite finished. He talks of publishing 
it in the ' Cambridge Miscellany.' You will be 
pleased with it, and a few others, but the world in 
general will judge of it, as of poor Rossetti's ex- 
planation of Dante. I say nothing of this to Bartle, 
who must be in no disposition to be pleased with 
hearing of any studies which interfere with the 
completion of the ' Frogs,' to which indeed I wish 
my brother would give the necessary attention ; 
but I find he fears breaking in upon the train of 
thought with which his mind is at present occupied, 
he thinks he might not be able to recover it again." 

Visitors of distinction, political, literary, or social, 
were not very numerous in Malta in those days ; 
but few of them arrived without bringing or obtain- 
ing during their stay an introduction to Mr. Frere. 
Sometimes these introductions led to laughable 
mistakes, one of which is described in the following 
letter from Miss Frere to her brother Bartle : — 

" There have been several interruptions, and I 



JOHN HObKHAM FRERE. 239 

could have wished you were present at the inter- 
view of one visitor who came with a letter from 
Cavaliere Landalina of Syracuse ; I Was making 
the civil to him in the drawing-room, trying to 
make out what he was. He spoke French, his 
dress was studied, and ornamented down the front 
of his shirt with very splendid coloured stones, a 
brooch and buttons. I was thinking how I should 
get to give notice to my brother, for Lady Georgina 
Wolff being with me, I did not like to leave the 
person on her hands, when in walked my brother, 
as he had been sitting in his arm-chair ; his velvet 
cap on, and a dressing-gown all covered with snuff 
in the front, and bearing marks of it in various 
parts. After a little while, the gentleman explained 
that the design of his visit was to give my brother 
an opportunity of possessing himself of some black- 
ing, excellent for shoes and harness, the invention 
of his late father, and that he had five bottles with 
him in the calesse, value 72 francs, which he should 
be happy to leave with him." 

In December Mr. Frere wrote to his brother 
George : — 

" For an account of ourselves, let me refer you to 
a long letter which Susan has written to Lizzy, 
though how she can have filled it with anything 
this place affords I cannot imagine. Let me also 
thank you for Sir George Rose's book, which I was 
really pleased with, and like his solution of some 
difficulties better than others that had occurred to 
me upon the same points. I speak only of the 
beginning, and exclusive of the geology, of which I 
know next to nothing and suspect that he does not 
know much. This, however, I know, that both 
Moses and Solomon must have known more of that 
science than was known in Europe thirty years ago. 
The rest of his volume I have got to read, for it 
was snatched from me by a lady who has not yet 
returned it. 



240 MEMOIR OF 

" Do you see anything of Rossetti ? I feel very 
anxious about him, and should be glad to know if 
he has not worked himself into ill health. I have 
sent presents of his books to some gentlemen in 
Italy. He is prohibited in the highest degree, and 
one of his old acquaintances knew nothing, or did 
not feel it safe to confess that he knew anything 
even of his Dante. In Malta I think that the 
English are upon honour with respect to Catho- 
licity, and therefore I have not communicated it. 

" Susan has been occupying herself in a very 
good work, the superintendence of a soup kitchen, 
in which the ladies are the managers and directors. 
She is just come to call for my letter. We are both 

well. Have you heard that Lord has become 

very serious in point of religion ? His sister told 
me so — regretting it." 

About the same time he wrote to his brother 
Bartle :— 

" I am ashamed of writing to you without saying 
something about what has given you so much 
trouble, viz., those same ' Frogs.' I must publish 
them, but cannot find myself in the vein for writing 
the notes which, unluckily, are promised in the 
marginal references : perhaps when the weather 
changes I may succeed. At present we are drowned 
with rain, and notes are dry work. 

" With respect to our individual selves, we are all 
very well. 

" The rain has filled all the tanks. In September 
they were all dry but one, and that had only two 
feet of water. 

" Susan is very busy at this moment with an old 
ebony cabinet, which she has persuaded me to buy 
a bargain. But there is some little disappointment 
I believe about the drawers which, upon examina- 
tion, are found to be cedar, and hence a doubt arises 
as to the propriety of painting them. How it will 
be settled it is impossible to foresee. In the mean 
time believe me, &c. 



JOHN HOOKHAM ERE RE. 241 

Two months later, nth February, 1833, his sister 
wrote : — 

" My brother is much better than he was during 
the time he shut himself up entirely. The dismal 
weather continues, but he usually takes some little 
exercise, upon the roof of the house at least, and he 
has had company, and joined in dinner parties given 
to some strangers, who came with letters addressed 
to almost every house in Malta, and one to Sir John 
Richardson. They went on in the packet to see 
Corfu and Zante, and then after their quarantine 
was over, they remained a little more than a fort- 
night, going for Sicily and Naples in a steamer 
which brought a party of seventy visitors from 
Naples. They were chiefly Poles and Russians 
with hard names and titles, some few French, and 
fewer English. Lady Georgina Wolff found a cousin 
among the latter. . . . She was pleased to learn 
from him that some of her Whig relations think 
the reform has gone too far, especially General 

W , who, from being a very vehement partisan, 

is become a decided Tory or Conservative. 

told my brother, that of the number of those in 
France of the same sentiments as himself, the 
greater part choose to live in perfect retirement, 
neither meddling with politics nor mixing in gene- 
'ral society ; but there is a strong party in favour 
of the Duchesse de Berri, who has displayed a 
resolution and courage, and generous regard for 
others, together with a disregard to danger as 
affecting her own person, which would be sufficient 
to furnish out half-a-dozen heroines of romance. 
Her strength of constitution is no less extra- 
ordinary than the firmness and energy of her spirit. 
These two Frenchmen, of finished manners, like 
the very best style of English breeding, made a 
pleasant contrast with our three English strangers, 
Archdeacon , his son, and another clergy- 
man their friend, who have a becoming simplicity 

R 



242 MEMOIR OF 

and placidity of deportment very agreeable also. 
We were sorry at their going just as we found 
out that we liked them. The son, on whose 
account they are travelling, is quite well ; but 
the friend, Mr. Newman, 1 of Oriel, was confined 
with some ailment of his chest. My brother, had 
some good talk with him one morning, and would 
have liked to introduce his Aristophanes to him 
had there been fair opportunity. The brother of 
this Mr. Newman is a young man of great promise, 
who has left the fairest prospect of advancement in 
England, to go as missionary to Persia. Mr. Wolff 
we expect daily, having heard of his arrival at the 
Himalayan Mountains, and meeting there with Mr. 
Horace Churchill and Lord and Lady William Ben- 
tinck, with whom he was to stay a fortnight, and 
then proceed south. William Edward, 52 in his last 
letter, of the 17th of August, mentions Mr. Wolff, 
and Lord Clare's kindly disposition towards this 
most extraordinary man. I shall be glad when he 
returns in safety, though I do not expect to enjoy 
his being in such close neighbourhood, for the rest- 
less energy which actuates him, regardless of time 
and common conveniences, is not suited to every- 
day life." 

On March 21st, 1833, Mr. Frere wrote to his 
brother Bartle : — 

" As you were kind enough to advance me a 
letter on the credit of my good intention, I now 
send you not only a letter for yourself, but another 
for Hamilton, which as you will see refers to matters 
likely to fall within your local and personal know- 
ledge. 

1 Dr. Newman. 

2 Their nephew, third son of their brother Edward, had 
then recently joined the Indian Civil Service, in which he 
rose to be Senior Judge of the Sudder Court and Member of 
Council at Bombay. He was expecting Mr. Wolff at Bombay 
on his return from his first visit to Bokhara. 



JOHN HO OKU AM FRERE. 243 

" I am also precisely in the same situation with 
the Antiquarian Society, except that I have no 
arrears to pay (having compounded for them by 
a single payment at my admission), but there also 
all the volumes of Archaeologia which are my due, 
with prints and other publications of the Society, 
lie accumulated. Now if at any time you should 
be seized by a paroxysm of activity, Gurney or 
W. Hamilton himself would assist you to get them. 
I do not, as you see, mention this to Hamilton, but 
the other point, my dues from the Dilettanti, as 
connected naturally with the correspondent pay- 
ment of my own arrears to that eminent society. 

" Pray send to me any remaining copies of the 
twenty of Rossetti's last book. 1 I have sent away 
in different directions all that I had here. One this 
morning to Algiers. The Hats are arrived, and 
are exquisite. I am so delighted with them that 
I can hardly keep them off my head. I almost 
expected to have found Theognis at the bottom 
of the box, but the contents were all for the outside 
of the head. 

" I am anxious about Temple. 2 I think he might 
make a good sermon on the duties and character 
of a preacher before the House in times such as 
•were formerly and are now returned, when the 
Commons were, as they are now(?), a perfect re- 
presentation of the will and spirit of the people. 
The preachers were then for the most part extra- 
ordinary men for learning, activity and austerity 
of life and manners. The audience, with whatever 
shade of opinion, zealous believers. I think George 
with his original good sense would be able to help 
him, if he could get half an hour of Coleridge. 



1 " Spirito Antipapale." 
His youngest brother had been appointed Speaker's 
Chaplain. 



244 MEMOIR OF 

" Pray let me know what you hear of poor Lord 

D . Is there any chance of his being restored 

to society ? I have been very sincerely grieved 
for him. Your neighbour's funeral was precisely 
such a one as she would have directed. I cannot 
say that I am very sorry for her, she made her 
husband's house very disagreeable to all his friends, 
and I found it so among the rest." 

The following remarks on social and political 
prospects in England are contained in a letter to 
his brother Edward, dated 14th May, 1833, and 
were elicited by his hearing that his nephew Richard 1 
wished to enter the Army : — 

" I could for a moment delude myself by ima- 
gining that things were getting right, and arrived 
at a fixed point at which they would rest ; but 
I remember how during the progress of the French 



1 Sixth son of his brother Edward ; born 18 17, died a lieute- 
nant in H. M.'s 13th Regiment of Light Infantry, 1842, from the 
effect of the hardships and exposure undergone by him during 
the Affghan war. He was present in every action in which his 
corps was engaged throughout the war in Affghanistan, 
amongst which were the storming of Ghuznee in 1839, tne 
battle of Bamdan in 1 840, and the march through the Khoord, 
Cabool, and Tezeen Passes in 1841, when he was wounded. 
He afterwards did service, which was publicly noticed, in 
the successful defence of Jellalabad in 1 842, where the tide 
of disaster was first stayed, and from whence the ascendency 
of British power was ultimately re-established. Lieutenant;. 
Frere returned to Cabool with the force in September, 1842, 
and was within a few days' march of Ferozepoor, where the 
troops were assembling to receive the honour due to their 
distinguished services, when he died at Rawul Pindee in the 
Punjaub. 

Havelock, in his account of the attack and capture of 
Ghuznee, adds this note : — " The narrator must be allowed to 
indulge the partiality of friendship in recording that the first 
standard that was planted on the ramparts of the citadel was 
the Regimental Colour of the 13th Light Infantry, carried on 
the occasion by Ensign R. E. Frere." — [Literary Gazette, 12th 
Sept., 1840.] 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 245 

Revolution there were intervals of calm, and a seem- 
ing stability of things under a new form, and how 
often these hopes were disappointed. It is as people, 
who are standing on the sea shore, and who because 
the last wave does not reach so far upon the beach 
as the one before, take it for granted that the tide 
is turned. I could contrive, too, to flatter myself in 
this way ; but there are other more certain tokens 
which mark that it is setting in. I tell my friends, and 
I am convinced of it, that it is in vain to think that 
we can continue to have an Almack's administration. 
They have insisted upon letting the ruffians into 
the House, and now they call upon their old oppo- 
nents to assist them in defending the dining-room, 
but it will not do, at least not beyond this Parlia- 
ment at the utmost ; the next will be the pendent to 
the Legislative Assembly, and then welcome 20ths 
of June and ioths of August and 2nds of September, 
and 2ists of January and all the Fructidors, and 
Messidors, and Thermidors. Such being, in my 
estimation, the prospect before us, I should have 
been well pleased if George and Richard (vis unita 
fortior) had been inclined to settle themselves out 
of the reach of mischief; I should willingly have 
made any necessary sacrifice for the purpose. If 
however Richard's mind is fixed upon heroic 
achievements and triumphant laurels, and such 
branches of learning, I suppose I must purchase 
him his commission, but I would much rather give 
much more to place him in a more hopeful and 
happy situation." 

On the same subject he wrote to his brother 
Bartle, Feb. 14th, 1834: — 

"... I am vexed to think of Richard's going into 
the Army ; it is the most desperate and hopeless 
of all professions, in the present state of things. 
Look to the growing opinion — what is it ? That 
the Army, in its present state, is a useless and ex- 



246 MEMOIR OF 

pensive incumbrance ; that we must either reduce 
it vigorously, to ' low peace establishment,' like 
what we had forty years ago — or expend it des- 
perately in a War. 

" The rising opinion in the Country is divided 
between these two alternatives ! The latter is I 
think likely to prevail, and we shall see a War, and 
lose. A war for anything — a war to support Ibra- 
him Pacha against the Russians and Greeks — in 
short anything for a War. 

" I do not speak of the disposition of the present 
Ministry, they are merely the Drop Curtain which 
conceals the preparations for the future tragedy ; 
I am thinking of their inevitable successors. Now 
though I should not have grudged the expenditure 
of a few Nephews at Talavera or Salamanca, I 
should not be reconciled to the idea of having 
devoted them torvo spectacula Marti, in contests 
such as I foresee — contests for no object. 

" The other alternative, that of a system of strict 
military retrenchment, is not more encouraging to 
a young man, without interest, or connexion, or a 
command of money. . . . We are well at last, but 
there has been a good deal of illness. I have had 
my share." 

In a letter dated 8th June, 1833, Miss Frere 
writes : — 

" My brother says he is going to write and ask 
himself manfully for Niebuhr and the Parkhurst 
Hebrew Lexicon in a good type ; but whether he 
actually will, I doubt, for there are Galignanis come 
in of as late date as the 29th May from Marseilles, 
which he is reading. He says you do very pru- 
dently in requiring great precision about commis- 
sions, otherwise we should plague you unmercifully. 
. . . He believes he did leave some of his copies of 
the ' Spirito Antipapale' in Rossetti's hands, to be 
distributed, and the rest to be sent here ; whether 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 247 

there are more to come, I suppose he will ascer- 
tain from Rossetti himself, to whom he says he 
means to write to-day. I wish there may be a 
reserve, for he is very desirous of making the book 
known ; and I have had first the copy Rossetti 
himself sent me taken, to be given to a gentleman 
going to Rome ; and again, when possessed of an- 
other, that went to Sicily." 

After describing various improvements in the 
garden : — " My brother has made himself a very 
broad strait walk along a north wall, where from 
noon till near sunset there is shade. He never took 
any concern in the garden before, but the having 
this length of about 150 yards to pace up and down 
he enjoys ; and by dint of watering, we have al- 
ready a pretty little collection of shrubs and plants, 
looking fresh and growing fast, in a broad border 
that goes parallel with the wall." 

He had also been much interested in promoting 
the emigration of the poorer classes of Maltese, 
who had suffered much from the extensive reduc- 
tions of establishments. " He has assisted a good 
many in getting to the African coast, — to Tunis, to 
Tripoli, and Alexandria, where the Maltese Arabic 
is readily understood, and at the latter place good 
workmen get profitable employment in the Pacha's 
establishments. At Algiers no one is allowed to 
land unless they have money to spend. At first 
the French were well content to receive any arti- 
ficer who went to exercise his trade, and the having 
the place open was a great resource." 

The following from Mr. Frere to his brother 
George, is dated June 30th, 1833 : — 

" I believe I must mark this secret. 

" It is so long since I have written to you that 
I cannot omit the opportunity (not of answering it) 
of acknowledging your last letter. The fact is that 
somehow or other the attitude of writing has become 



248 MEMOIR OF 

so uneasy to me that it has taken me the whole 
morning to write a letter of three sheets and a half, 
not a very usual thing with me ; but it was addressed ' 
to R , who by mere accident has escaped pub- 
lishing a work, which would have done neither him 
nor anybody else any good. In the course of his 
researches he has fallen in with some discoveries as 
I conceive of partially conceived truths or opinions, 
the publication of which in his opinion (much more 
I suppose in mine) would be productive of infinite 
mischief. Upon this subject I had to write to him to 
exhort and dehort. He is an excellent, honest man, 
but exposed I am afraid to the suggestions of ad- 
visers who have not so much good principle. I wish 
that some of the family would . . . look after him 
a little. It may be the means of doing a great deal 
of good or preventing a great deal of harm. He 
has a great respect for the good opinion of good 
people. 

" Do you hear anything of this new church, 1 and 
what does Hatley say of it ? It is, I apprehend, a 
delusion ; but even in this view it is a most awful 
characteristic of the times." 

In 1834 another link with his early literary 
associations was broken by the death of Coleridge, 
for whom he had the warmest personal regard, 
joined to the highest admiration for his learning, 
and critical as well as poetical powers. Coleridge 
was not only, in his estimation, the parent of all 
that is soundest and most acute in modern English 
philosophy, but of much that is most beautiful 
in modern English poetry. " Coleridge's waste 
thoughts," he said, "would have set up a dozen of 
your modern poets." In reply to a question as to 
how they first became acquainted, he said : — " I 
remember seeing some verses in a newspaper signed 

1 Irvingites. 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 249 

S. T. C, and being very anxious to find out and 
make the acquaintance of the author ; but it was 
not till fifteen years afterwards that I made his 
acquaintance. I went up and introduced myself to 
him after one of his lectures." 

Coleridge, in that most touching record of his 
feelings and wishes preserved in his will, written in 
Sept., 1829, said : — " Further to Mr. Gillman, as the 
most expressive way in which I can only mark my 
relation to him, and, in remembrance of a great and 
good man, revered by us both, I leave the manu- 
script volume lettered ' Arist. Manuscript — Birds, 
Acharnians, Knights,' presented to me by my dear 
friend and patron, the Rt. Hon. John Hookham 
Frere, who of all the men that I have had the 
means of knowing during my life, appears to me 
eminently to deserve to be characterized as b Kaxo- 

" To Mr. Frere himself I can only bequeath my 
assurance, grounded on a faith equally precious to 
him as to me, of a continuance of those prayers 
which I have for many years offered for his tem- 
poral and spiritual well-being. And further, in 
remembrance that it was under his (Mr. Gillman's) 
roof I enjoyed so many hours of delightful and 
profitable communion with Mr. J. H. Frere, it is my 
wish that this volume should, after the demise of 
James Gillman senior belong, and I do hereby 
bequeath the same to James Gillman junior, in the 
hope that it will remain an heir-loom in the Gillman 
family." 

The following is from Mr. Frere to his niece, who 
had greatly endeared herself to him, during a pro- 
longed stay at Malta : — 

" April 8i/i, 1834. 

" My dear Jane, 

" It seems to me I am chargeable with a 
long arrear of unanswered letters. I will therefore 



250 MEMOIR OF 

strike off something from that account by replying 
to your last. You think that John 1 will have 
written to me. Much you know of Mr. John ! But, 
however, he is going on well, I have no doubt ; and 
as our name is to be spread over land and sea (as 
the poet says) I trust he will spread it over the sea 
in a creditable manner. You give a pleasing pic- 
ture of Mr. and Mrs. H 's establishment, con- 
cluding (like a wise old gentleman) with a general 
remark that a few young men of family living in 
the country in the way that he does would do a 
great deal of good. Nothing can be more true, and 
I am pleased that you remember my inveteracy 
against living genteel on a small income. It is my 
principle, though I sometimes take a fancy to 
indulge myself in a shilling's worth of magnifi- 
cence ; accordingly I have laid out to the amount 
of 1 6 dollars in an old-new looking-glass frame for 
the old dining-room, just like the old ones, and IOO, 
I am ashamed to say, in another, uncouther, and 
larger, of ebony and figures, and what not. Where 
we are to put it is not decided. Some are for the 
dining-room, and over the chimney-piece ; others 
again propose substituting it for that which is in 
the old dining-room, and placing that which it sup- 
plants in the new dining-room. My own opinion 
(I confess it) is unfixed and wavering with opposite 
suggestions. Perhaps if Bartle would chaperone 
you, you might be able to give a casting vote 
on the question. . . . Colonel Campbell, from 
Cairo, tells us that a steamer will start from Cal- 
cutta on the 25th of April, and another on the 15th 
of July for Suez, and on their return will touch at 

1 His brother Edward's fourth son, who was in the Navy. 
He was afterwards, when a lieutenant on board the Carys- 
fort, appointed Commissioner for the Sandwich Islands, when 
they were provisionally ceded to Lord George Paulet in 1844; 
after having distinguished himself in the Crimea under Lord 
Lyons, he died a Post-Captain in 1864. 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 251 

the Island of Socotra, where it is arranged with the 
Governor of Bombay that a vessel is to be waiting 
to convey letters and passengers to Bombay. 1 Will 
this suit Bartle better than his earlier plan, or 
is he anxious to get a start ? I send it as I 
received it 

" Wolff is returned, and is now in quarantine. I 
believe he means to remain and put the account of 
his journey in order for publication ; but I expect 
he will be sick of a calm before long. I have seen 
him, and did not find him at all altered, or looking 
the worse for all his fatigues and hardships." 

In this year (1834) he received from his friend 
William Stewart Rose the first edition of a poetic 
epistle, inciting him to join Mr. Rose in the retreat 
he then occupied near Brighton. The epistle has 
been twice privately printed, but never, I believe, 
published entire. 2 Some of the most beautiful 
passages were given to the public in an article on 
Townsend's " Miscellanies " in the " Quarterly Re- 
view" for July, 1836. But the reviewer naturally 
quoted most frequently from those portions which 
described the poet's friend, the Rev. Charles 
Townsend, and the Sussex coast scenery, and 
people among whom they lived at Brighton, and 
the then quiet village of Preston. No apology will 
be needed, even to those few who have access to 
the original, for here quoting the passages which 
have more special reference to Mr. Frere, and to 
the circumstances which surrounded him in Malta. 
The epistle is addressed — 



1 This refers to the first attempts to establish a steam com- 
munication overland via Egypt. His nephew, fifth son of his 
brother Edward, had just got the permission of the Court of 
Directors to go to Bombay overland, in hopes of meeting this 
experimental steamer. 

2 The first edition, 8vo., was privately printed at Brighton, 
without title, in 1834. It was reprinted with considerable 
additions and alterations in 1837. Brighton, i2mo. The 
quotations here given are from the later edition. 



252 MEMOIR OF 

"To the Right Honourable John Hookham 
Frere, in Malta. 

" William Stewart Rose presents with such kind cheer 
And health as he can give John Hookham Frere. 
" Brighton, MDCCCXXXIV." 

" That bound like bold Prometheus on a rock, O 

Self-banish'd man, you boil in a Scirocco. ' 

Save when a Maestrale makes you shiver, 

While worse than vulture pecks and pines your liver ; — 

Where neither lake nor river glads the eye 

Sear'd with the glare of 'hot and copper sky;' 

Where dwindled tree o'ershadows withered sward, 

Where green blade grows not ; where the ground is charr'd : — 

Where, if from wither'd turf and dwindled tree 

You turn to look upon a summer sea, 

And Speronards sail of snowy hue, 

Whitening and brightening on that field of blue ; 

Or eye the palace, rich in tapestried hall, 

The Moorish window and the massive wall ; 

Or mark the many loitering in its shade, 

In many-colour'd garb and guise array'd ; 

Long-hair'd Sclavonian skipper, with the red 

And scanty cap, which ill protects his head ; 

White-kilted Suliot, gay and gilded Greek, 

Grave, turban'd Turk, and Moor of swarthy cheek ; — 

Or sainted John's contiguous pile explore, 

Gemm'd altar, gilded beam, and gorgeous floor, 

Where you imblazon'd in mosaic see 

Memorials of a monkish chivalry ; 

The vaulted roof, impervious to the bomb, 

The votive tablet, and the victor's tomb, 

Where vanquished Moslem, captive to his sword, 

Upholds the trophies of his conquering lord ; 

Where if, while clouds from hallow'd censer steam, 

You muse, and fall into a mid-day dream, 

And hear the pealing chaunt, and sacring bell, 

Amid loud 'larum and the burst of shell, 

Short time to mark those many sights, which I 

Have sung, short time to dream of days gone-by, 

Forced alms must purchase from a greedy crowd 

Of lazy beggars, filthy, fierce, and loud, 

Who landing-place, street, stair, and temple crowd : — 

Where on the sultry wind for ever swells 

The jangle of ten thousand tuneless bells, 1 

"The bells in Malta are rattled, not rung, and almost 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 253 

While priestly drones in hourly pageant pass, 
Hived in their several cells by sound of brass ; — 
Where merry England's merriest month looks sorry, 
And your waste island seems but one wide quarry ; — 
I muse : — and think you might prefer my town, 
Its pensile pier, dry beach, and breezy down." 

After a description of the Downs and their 
scenery, which is worthy of the best masters of 
English pastoral poetry, Mr. Rose paints the little 
hamlet of Preston, the ancient frescoes of Becket's 
murder in the church, and his friend, its then curate- 
pastor, their walks and rides by down and valley, 
and their after-dinner colloquies : — 

u When rambling table-talk, not tuned to one key, 

Runs on chace, race, horse, mare ; fair, bear and monkey ; 

Or shifts from field and pheasant, fens and snipes, 

To the wise Samian's world of antitypes ; 

And when my friend's in his Platonic lunes, 

Although I lose his words I like his tunes ; 

And sometimes think I must have ass's ears, 

Who cannot learn the music of the spheres. 

But oft we pass to Epicurean theme 

Waking from mystic Plato's morning dream, 

And prosing o'er some Greek or Gascon wine, 

Praise the rich vintage of the Rhone or Rhine." 

Their potations, however, were, as the valetudi- 
narian poet confesses, more suited to a couple of 
anchorites than to genuine votaries of Bacchus : — 

" But that old saw, great talkers do the least, 
Is verified in me and in my priest." . . . 
" They ' seldom drain withal the wine-cup dry.' " 

Then addressing his exiled friend : — 

" Would you were here ! we might fulfil our task; 
Faith ! we might fathom Plato and the flask. 1 

incessantly, on account of religious festivals, in honour of 
innumerable processions of monks who are always 

Hived in their several cells by sound of brass? W. S. R. 
• ' " His ability to sound the depths of Plato is perhaps 
warranted by the testamentary honour paid by that distin- 
guished Platonist, Mr. Coleridge, to the person who is ad- 
dressed." W. S. R. 



254 MEMOIR OF 

Or we — would you not help us to unsphere 

His spirit to unfold new worlds — might hear 

That rampant strain you were the first to raise, 

Whereof another bears away the praise, 

Who (let me not his better nature wrong) 

Confess'd you father of his final song ; ' 

That rhyme which ranks you with immortal Berni ; 

Whiqh treats of giant, monk, knight, tilt and tourney ; 

And tells how Anak's race, detesting bells, 

Besieged the men that rang them, in their cells ; 

With whom they justly warr'd as deadly foes 

For breaking their sequester'd seat's repose. 

(Strange siege, unquestion'd by misdoubting Bryant !) 

And how in that long war, a young sick giant 

Was taken, christen'd, and became a friar ; 

And how he roar'd, and what he did, i' the quire. 2 

Or, if, like that rare bard who left half-told 

Of yore the story of Cambuscan bold, 

You will not tell the sequel of your tale 

Of cavern, keep, and studious cloister's pale, 

Sing (what you verse in veriest English vein) 

Some snatches of his merriest, maddest strain, 

Who in wild masque upon Athenian stage 

Held up to scorn the follies of the sage 

Famed for vain wisdom, that in Cecrops' town 

Would fain have pull'd time-honour'd custom down ; 

Or, sparing the blind guides of Greece and Rome, 

Yourself may scourge our blinder guides at home ; 

You have crush'd reptiles. ' Rise and grasp,' (I say 

In your own words) ' a more reluctant prey.' 3 

But anxious fear and angry feeling square 

111 with the pleasures I would have you share. 

So gladly I return to down and dale, 

And sea, though sadden'd now by wintry gale." 

1 " Lord Byron is usually considered as the naturalizer of 
this species of poetry, but he had seen Mr. Frere's work before 
the publication of ' Beppo' and ' Don Juan.' He made this 
avowal to me at Venice, and said he should have inscribed 
' Beppo' to him that had served him as a model, if he had 
been sure it would not have been disagreeable, supposing (as 
I conclude) that some passages in it might have offended 
him." W. S. R. 

4 " This part of the story, showing the development of the 
green mind of a giant under monkish discipline, was never 
printed." W. S. R. (but vide suprci, p. 168). 

3 " See the poem entitled ' New Morality' in the Anti- 
jacobin." W. S. R. 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 255 

To this succeed a charming- series of sea and 
land paintings, and inimitable sketches of the win- 
ter frequenters of Brighton, which the Quarterly- 
Reviewer justly styles Horatian, but which are too 
long to quote here. The epistle ends, 

" Sometimes ('tis strange ; and I'm at my wit's end 
To find the cause) things please us which offend ; 

* # # # # 

And thus at strife with the retreat he chose 
Here dwells your invalided William Rose ; 
Who sings the pleasures and the pains — as best 
He can — of his selected place of rest. 
Nor think it strange if he that home commend 
For pains as well as pleasures to his friend. 
A preacher 1 (and he, like a saint of old, 
Deserves the title of the mouth of gold) 
Says that it steads not body more than soul 
To infuse some bitter in the festive bowl ; 
Which makes the cup so season'd, when 'tis quaff'd, 
A sounder and more salutary draught ; 
Thus I, the beverage which I mingle, stir 
Like that brave prelate, with a branch of myrrh, 
Join me, dear Frere, and be, if you can swallow 
This wine and wormwood draught, my great Apollo." 

The light in which Mr. Rose regarded his friend's 
voluntary exile and protracted residence at Malta 
was very much that in which it appeared to Mr. 
Frere's relatives, and in which I was prepared 
to view it, when in May, 1834, he invited me to 
visit him on my way to India. But one result 
of my stay for some weeks under his roof was, 
(whilst deepening the regret I felt at his continued 
separation from so many who loved and honoured 
him, and who would have been in every way bene- 
fited by his society,) to make me feel that it would 
be a very hazardous experiment for him to uproot 
himself from a position, which, in many respects, 
suited him better than almost any life I could 
imagine for him in England. 

1 " Jeremy Taylor." W. S. R. 



256 MEMOIR OF 

He had remained so long in the genial and equa- 
ble climate of Malta, that his constitution and habits 
had become accustomed to a temperature which 
probably tried him less than the chills and constant 
variations of an English winter would have done. 

If in Malta he was cut off from the literary and 
political society of London, he would, on the other 
hand, had he returned to England, have missed 
from the circle of his early associates most of the 
friends of his youth and manhood whose society he 
valued. In the perfect quiet and uninterrupted 
leisure of his life at Malta, he enjoyed, to an extent 
rarely attainable elsewhere, that intellectual com- 
munion with the great authors of other times and 
countries which has been so often described as the 
peculiar privilege and consolation of scholars in 
their old age ; and he lived, among a simple and 
grateful people, a life of singular ease and dignity, 
rendered conspicuously useful by his large-hearted 
liberality and intelligent benevolence. 

The following extracts, which have been kindly 
placed at my disposal from the letters and journals 
of a valued friend, 1 who stayed with Mr. Frere a 
few years afterwards, will show the impressions left 
on an acute and impartial observer, who saw him 
then for the first time. They relate to a period 
rather later than my own visit, but Malta had been 
little changed in the interval, and Mr. Frere's mode 
of life was still the same as when I was with him. 
There were then few steamers among the men-of- 
war or merchant-ships in the Mediterranean, save 
the monthly mail-packets, which looked into Valetta 
Harbour every fortnight, to and fro between Corfu 
and England. All the inlets which indent the 
rocky shore round Valetta are now crowded with 
steamers of every nation which possesses a mercan- 

1 Mr. G. T. Clark of Dowlais House; and Talygar, Gla- 
morganshire. 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 257 

tile marine, carrying half the commerce of India 
and the Levant, of Australia and China ; but in 
1834 the Quarantine Harbour was rarely tenanted 
by more than two or three small sailing vessels, 
Greek or Italian, with corn from Odessa, or pulse 
from Alexandria. There were few signs of life, 
except perhaps an occasional shore boat of quaint 
form and brightly painted, with two huge eyes on 
the prow, and rowed by a couple of Maltese fisher- 
men in red pendent caps. The blue waters rippled 
clear and undefiled against the white retaining wall 
of the roadway which separated Mr. Frere's house 
at the Pieta from the harbour. The building itself, 
originally two or three separate houses which had 
been thrown into one, extended for some distance 
along the road, at the foot of a rocky hill, rising 
steeply from the waterside. It was a good speci- 
men of a Maltese residence of former times, such 
as the knights built for themselves in their later 
and more luxurious days, when, though the galleys 
of St. John were still the terror of the Barbary 
Rovers, the Order thought less of fighting Saracen 
or Turk, than of enjoying the good things earned for 
its members by the great soldiers of its earlier years. 

A massive portal admitted the visitor to a large 
hall with a stone arched roof, supported by colossal 
caryatides of Giants and Titans at the angles, rather 
dimly lighted by windows high up in the walls, 
while a cistern of clear cool water in the centre, 
surrounded by strange semi-tropical plants, and 
enlivened by a macaw of magnificent plumage, 
helped to remind the English visitor that he had 
reached a southern climate. The house itself is 
thus described by Mr. Clark : — 

" The house stands near the head of the Quaran- 
tine Harbour, with only a road between it and the 
sea. It is of considerable extent, has an upper 
floor, and a flat roof. The ground floor is occupied 
by the servants and as offices, and on the upper 

s 



258 MEMOIR OF 

and principal floor are the sitting-rooms and bed- 
rooms of the family. A double staircase, winding 
round a small open court with a fountain, leads 
from the entrance-hall into a long picture gallery, 
into which open the principal rooms. These are 
lofty, spacious, and well-proportioned. The walls 
are painted, as are the joists of the open ceiling. 
A row of small holes, near the cornice, open into 
the external air. The doors and windows are large, 
and the latter open with folding-doors into large 
balconies, parts of which are covered in and shaded. 
The floors are of stone, polished and stained in 
various patterns, and the rooms are well furnished 
with tables, sofas, easy chairs, ottomans, a pro- 
fusion of carved cabinets, and mirrors in heavy 
Venetian gilt frames, according to the prevailing 
Italian taste. Behind the house rises a steep hill 
of rock, and this which at considerable labour has 
been converted into a garden, forms, to an English 
eye, the principal curiosity of the place. The whole 
rock, up to the summit, is cut into terraces and 
platforms, parts of which are hollowed out into rock 
basins, which are filled with earth brought from a 
distance. Many of these terraces are enclosed by 
walls, and upon others are double rows of columns, 
supporting a trellis work covered with creepers, so 
as to protect the walks below from the rays of the 
sun. The different stages are approached by flights 
of steps, and the whole hill is excavated into tanks, 
containing a sufficient supply of water. 

"The view of the whole from a temple at its 
summit is very singular. The garden looks like a 
collection of sheep folds or paper boxes, but nothing 
can be richer than the heavy ornate staircases, tem- 
ples, seats, and benches, lines of arches and balus- 
trades, Gothic and Moorish turrets, and the gibbets 
for raising water from the tanks, all carved in the 
fine white Maltese stone, after bold and flowing 
patterns, and in excellent taste. 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 259 

" As to trees and shrubs, all kinds from the 
cedar to the hyssop are there. The fig, palm, 
banana, orange, lemon, tamarind, vine, pome- 
granate, and olive ; magnificent geraniums as big 
as that at Warwick, legions of roses, and carnations 
that would do credit to Chiswick. 

" The customs of the house are luxurious. No- 
body is visible before eleven or twelve, at which 
hours a sort of breakfast goes forward, which you 
may or may not attend. Before this, coffee is 
brought, if you wish, to your bed-room, and if you 
are disposed for an early walk, there is the garden 
with its pleasant alleys and trellised paths, or if 
you prefer the sea, it flows clear and bright before 
the very doors. Between eleven and seven people 
do what they please. Mr. Frere is reading or 
writing in his own apartment. At seven dinner 
goes forward. Covers are laid for a table full, and 
usually some privileged and pleasant guests drop 
in. The charm of the party is the master of the 
house, who though infirm in body, is not materially 
injured in mind or memory, and receives all with 
a fine old-fashioned courtesy that puts all at their 
ease. Other visitors come in the evening, usually 
good talkers, and the conversation becomes general. 
Mr. Frere however sees few strangers. After coffee 
comes a drive in the cool evening, perhaps from 
ten to midnight or even later, when the air is 
delightful." 

The garden here described was then, and con- 
tinued to the end of his life, a great source of 
interest to Mr. Frere, and afforded him almost his 
only means of outdoor exercise and amusement. 
It had been commenced with no further object 
than that of bringing into some kind of order the 
wilderness of stone walls, and prickly pears, and 
caruba trees which overspread the hill behind the 
house, but Mr. Frere soon found in it a ready 



260 MEMOIR OF 

means of giving employment to the poor. There 
were no poor laws then in Malta. A population 
denser, in proportion to the area it occupied, than 
any other in Europe, pressed at all times closely on 
its means of subsistence, which were greatly affected 
by every fluctuation in the Government military 
and naval establishments ; for the rocky island 
then produced no more corn than sufficed for about 
six weeks' consumption in every year, and any 
reduction in the numbers of workmen employed in 
the port and dockyard was sure to be felt in many 
a poor Maltese family already sorely straitened for 
daily food. 

From the earliest years of his residence Mr. 
Frere had been a great advocate for emigration, 
and his arguments, backed, as was his wont, by 
liberal assistance from his own purse, had a great 
effect in overcoming the prejudices of the Maltese, 
who are a very home-loving people, and in pro- 
moting that extensive emigration which of late 
years has planted large communities of industrious 
Maltese in Algeria, Egypt, and Syria ; and even 
carried numbers to distant settlements in South 
America and the West Indies. But the old, the 
lame, the halt, and the blind remained behind, and 
when the master of the house at the Pieta went out 
for his evening drive, a crowd of these would 
usually collect at the door to beg for alms, which 
were never withheld from the helpless, or to ask 
for aid to get employment for the able-bodied. 
The conversion of the rocky hill-side into a garden 
was made to supply work when other means failed. 
The Maltese is born a builder and carver in stone ; 
and the result was the labyrinth of flights of stone 
steps, terraces, walls, and carved balustrades which 
Mr. Clark describes. 

Political economists might shake their heads at 
what they would consider a very imperfect pallia- 
tive of a general evil. But Mr. Frere had his 



JOHN HO OK II AM I RE RE. 261 

reward in the gratitude of every class of the 
Maltese population, for while the better-informed 
fully appreciated his efforts to promote emigration, 
the poor knew him as one who was not content to 
answer a starving fellow-creature's appeal for aid, 
by an able exposition of the laws of supply and 
demand. 

In a letter written several years after the extracts 
just quoted, Mr. Clark writes : — 

" You asked me what impression Mr. Frere pro- 
duced upon me, and to describe him to you as he 
appeared to me during my stay under his roof at 
Malta in 1845. This is not an easy task, for his 
character was anything rather than commonplace. 

" What first struck me was his grand personal 
appearance. He was a very tall and altogether a 
large man, for his age very upright, with bold, 
commanding features, a good nose and brow, and 
a peculiar expression perhaps of sarcasm with a 
touch of hauteur about the curves of his mouth and 
nostrils. I have heard that Mr. Temple Frere was 
once spoken to for him by the Duke of Wellington ; 
but neither Mr. Temple Frere nor Mr. Edward 
Frere, two of his brothers, though both grandly 
built men, had anything of the expression to which 
I refer. Hoppner's picture, however, an excellent 
representation of him, gives this expression, which 
is also preserved in the engraving of it. 

" I was told that he saw few strangers, and was, 
therefore, the more pleased when I found that he 
did not treat me as a stranger. I had not been an 
hour at the Valetta Hotel before he sent for me, 
and lodged me in his house, then the Pieta. 

" At dinner he said little, but later in the .even- 
ing somebody used the phrase, ' toot him soundly,' 
for ' whip him,' and he at once noticed the word, 
quoted an instance of its use, and continued a con- 
versation till the small hours, upon old and quaint 
books and phrases of the sixteenth and seventeenth 



262 MEMOIR OF 

centuries, displaying quietly a wonderful acquaint- 
ance with half-forgotten literature, useless, as he 
called it. I was told that, though he sat up late, 
he did not often remain in company. 

" At breakfast he never appeared, and I rarely 
saw him much before dinner. At that meal and 
at tea he was accustomed to meet the few people 
whom he knew intimately, but he did not visit, 
and did not usually care for new faces. However, 
on one occasion, I remember, he received Bishop 
Alexander and his sister, and nothing could exceed 
his kindness to them. I think the bishop was 
introduced by Wolff, in whom Mr. Frere much 
delighted, and concerning whose sayings and 
doings, when he stayed at the Pieta, there were 
many droll stories. 

" Though he talked well, and was both a full and 
a ready man, he was never overbearing, and always 
willing to hear others. I remember his showing a 
good deal of knowledge on scientific military sub- 
jects, followed by a present of his copy of Jomini's 
works, to a young soldier then on his way to join 
his regiment. 

" Of early English literature he talked, as was 
to be expected, and of the 'Anti-Jacobin' and its 
poetry. But he said little of his own share in it, or 
of his own writings generally ; nor did I think it 
polite to lead the conversation to them. 

" He was full of anecdotes about Pitt, and 
Canning, and Wyndham — with whom, I think, he 
had some county connexion. 1 One of his anec- 
dotes was, that when canvassing together with 
Wyndham, a fish-wife opened upon them with a 
torrent of abuse. When she had done, Wyndham 
responded in her own strain, and fairly beat her 
down with his superior flow of the coarse vernacular 

1 Mr. Wyndham was his father's colleague in representing 
Norwich, and always a warm personal friend of Mr. Frere. 



JOHN HOOKHAM FEE RE. 263 

of the ' tyo cyownties.' It was very pleasant thus 
to meet a man who had moved on equal terms 
with the great political and literary leaders at the 
commencement of the present century ; who knew 
Holland House in its early days, and had been 
intimate with George Ellis and the founders of the 
* Quarterly Review,' and with Coleridge ; for 
Canning his affection was very great. 

" He had the good breeding of a past school, 
with little or nothing of its stiffness or formality. 
In his comments upon public events and business, 
there was a very remarkable high-minded and very 
upright way of forming an opinion, and a marked 
contempt for anything mean or tortuous. In this, as 
in the kindliness of his disposition, he appeared to 
me much to resemble his brother, Mr. Bartle Frere, 
also a diplomatist of the old school." 

Malta in 1834 was still looked on as one of our 
most important foreign possessions. Its English 
official society comprised many men of family and 
education, and the military and naval command 
were always confided to veterans of the great war, 
for the companions of Nelson and Wellington had 
not yet disappeared from the lists of those fit for 
active service. Among the younger naval and 
military officers there were always some connex- 
ions of Mr. Frere's early friends who had intro- 
ductions to him, and who found the Pieta ever 
open to them, and a host who could always tho- 
roughly enjoy the high spirits and unaffected 
frankness of a well-bred young Englishman. 

He found, too, in those days, much pleasure in 
the society of many of the Maltese and Italian in- 
habitants of the island, who mixed with the English 
on terms of greater intimacy and cordiality than is, 
perhaps, possible in these times of comparative 
unrest and ceaseless change. The last surviving 
knight of the Order, who had seen a Grand Master 
in the Palace at Valetta, was still an occasional 



264 MEMOIR OF 

guest of the English Governor. And there were 
many other relics of a picturesque and historical 
past, which gave interest and variety even to the 
very retired life which Mr. Frere led. 

Few months passed without his interchanging a 
visit with Caruana, the Roman Catholic bishop — a 
fine specimen of a learned, high-minded, and cour- 
teous ecclesiastic of the old school ; who, if he was 
little prepared to make concessions to the demands 
of modern liberalism, was still less inclined to seek 
compensation for the loss of political influence by 
submission to ultramontane ecclesiastical rule. 

Another frequent visitor was Sir Vincent Borg, 
also a Maltese gentleman of the old school. To 
these two men, he was wont to say, the English in 
a great measure owed the possession of the island. 

The following is from a note of a description of 
the rising against the French, as he related it to me 
one day after a visit from Borg : — 

" The insurrection against the French began by 
their attempting to rob some of the churches ; they 
were taking down some of the damask hangings in 
the great church at Birchircara, near the Pieta, 
when the people who were looking on, and could 
not stand such a sacrilege, tripped up the ladder 
of the men employed and killed them. They then 
went to Borg, who was not a man of noble family, 
and begged him to lead them, and ring the bells of 
the church as an alarm. He said, ' The bells are 
neither yours nor mine, they belong to the Prae- 
posito, let us ask him.' This he said to gain time 
to consult the Praeposito, an old man, of whose 
sagacity Borg had a high opinion ; he then took 
the Praeposito aside, and asked him what he 
thought should be done ? The old Praeposito 
answered, ' The thing is done now, and either 
they or we must go to the wall, so we must do 
our best to beat them.' Borg then went back to 
the Maltese crowd and agreed to lead them, rang 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 265 

the bells, and, setting two little boys on the top 
of the church tower at Birchircara to watch — one 
towards Valetta the other towards Civita Vecchia — 
he took a muster of the people and their fire-arms ; 
they had thirty stand of the latter, and the rest of 
the multitude were armed with sticks. At length 
a re-inforcement of the French, about three hundred 
in number, was seen issuing from the Floriana Gate. 
Borg led his men to attack them just where the 
Vignacourt Aqueduct crosses the road to Civita 
Vecchia. He placed his musketeers in ambush, 
and they fired from behind the stone walls, killed 
the officers, and then all closed in upon the men of 
the French detachment, who fairly turned and re- 
treated to Valetta. He got the bishop, who was 
then a young priest, to join him, and the Maltese 
next attacked a small sea battery towards St. Juliens, 
and, killing the guard, took the guns, which they 
dragged with the bell ropes into a battery erected 
on this (the Pieta) side. They had another against 
the Floriana Gate ; and, after raising the whole 
Maltese population of the island, they blockaded 
the French in Valetta. As the French were not 
strong enough to attempt sallies in force, the Mal- 
tese got to entertain a great contempt for them, 
and used to harass them in every kind of way, 
preventing their fishing in the harbour, getting 
down at night (for they can climb like cats) into 
the gardens which the French had made in the 
ditches, and destroying them till they made the 
French give up attempting to cultivate. On a 
small scale it was just like the insurrection in 
Spain ; when the province of Biscay, with a few 
hundred dollars in its treasury, formally declared 
war against the Emperor Napoleon (who had then 
Austria, Russia, and Prussia prostrate) and sent 
Biscayan dignitaries to England as ambassadors, 
who arrived simultaneously with the other envoys 
from the other provinces, sent without any previous 



266 MEMOIR OF 

concert. I remember Romana telling me he was 
once talking to some officers who said they feared 
the expulsion of the French would be a tedious 
business. ' Are you Spaniards,' he said, ' and do 
you forget that we were four hundred years in 
turning out the Moors ? But we did it at last \'" 1 

Among Mr. Frere's constant visitors at the Pieta 
in those days Father Marmora must not be omitted. 
He was very learned in Hebrew, and all its cognate 
languages. He had collected every word and in- 
scription which was then known to exist in Phoe- 
nician ; and had written a treatise to prove that 
Maltese was a dialect of Phoenician, and retained 
more of the old Punic element than any other 
language. He had for many years read Hebrew 
with Mr. Frere, who highly esteemed him, not only 
for his learning, but for his amiability and gentle 
manners. He rarely left his study in one of the 
religious houses at Floriana, except to visit the 
Pieta, and always dined with Mr. Frere on Sun- 
days ; when the conversation would occasionally — 
especially when Mr. Joseph Wolff was present — get 
so Semitic that it was not easy for an unlearned 
bystander to follow. 

The following are a few fragmentary recollec- 
tions of some of these Sunday evening conversa- 
tions, when Mr. Frere was incited by the worthy 
priest to enlarge on subjects connected with Phoe- 
nician antiquities : — 

J. H. F. " All the sites of Grecian colonies in 
Sicily were once possessed by the Phoenicians, and 
we have no record when or how they were trans- 
ferred to the Greeks without, as far as we know, 
any contest ; possibly it was when Tyre was ex- 
hausted by Nebuchadnezzar's attacks. Many of 

1 Borg was knighted a few years before his death, in 1837. 
He is buried in the church at Birchircara, partly built by him, 
and a characteristic epitaph by Mr. Frere records his many 
public services and private virtues. 



JOHN HOOKHAM FEE RE. 267 

the Greco-Sicilian coins bear Phoenician legends. 
Syracuse still retains its Phoenician name, it is 
'Marsa Sirocco,' i.e. the S. E. Port. There is a 
port still so called in Malta. So Marseilles, ori- 
ginally a Phoenician, and subsequently a Greek em- 
porium, retains its Phoenician name, it is ' Marsa,' 
the port. So port Mahon, 'Mago,' or Maho, is 
Phoenician for ' refuge.' This explains Hannibal's 
remark, when, by detaching his general Mago, he 
had completed his combinations for defeating the 
Romans at Thrasimenus ; l it was, in fact, a Punic 
pun ; he said, ' He was sure of them, because they 
had no Mago ' (i. e. refuge). 

" It is very possible that the Giant's Tower at 
Gozo, and the similar remains which are found 
elsewhere in Malta and, I believe, in Sardinia also, 
may be Phoenician. They certainly do not belong 
to the Greek or Roman, or any later age, and are 
quite different in style from any of the remains 
which are called Cyclopean or Etruscan in Italy." 

J. H. F. " I take it the real history of the siege 
of Syracuse was, that the Athenians having been 
successful in the East, by leading the patriotic 
spirit of the Greeks in opposing the Persians, 
thought to play the same game over again in the 
West against the Phoenicians and Tuscans ; but 
they forgot that all the Sicilian colonies were 
Doric, and that no man can play the same game 
in politics twice. Your throws are not the same ; 
and, if they are the same, your adversary knows 
how you played last time, and takes care to play 
differently himself." 

1 Query Trebia? Polyb. iii. 71 — 74, Liv. xxi. 54, 55. Com- 
pare with the account of the battle of Thrasimenus, Polyb. 
iii. 82 — 84, Liv. xxii. 4 — 6, in which Mago's name is not 
mentioned by either historian. He is, however, mentioned 
on this occasion by the poet Silius Italicus (iv. 825, v. 287 — 
375, 529, foil. 668). At Cannae, Mago was posted with Hanni- 
bal on the centre, Polyb. iii. 1 14, Liv. xxii. 46. 



268 MEMOIR OF 

In reply to a question, Are there any remains 
of the Osci still to be traced ? 

J. H. F. " The radical letters (S. C.) of the name 
Osci, are found in the names of a vast number 
of neighbouring nations — Siculi, Sicani, Susci, Cy- 
clopes (query Syclops) — a compound national name, 
the result of the union of two tribes (like Celtiberi, 
Gallogreci). Another nation, of whose name P. S. C. 
were the radical letters, is traced in Dolo-Pisci, or 
Dolopes. Etrusci is also a compound national 
name ; the Etri, or Atri, being a tribe who gave 
their name to the Adriatic. Pelasci, or Pelasgi, 
another compound (query, were the Pels, or Beels, 
your Indian Bheels ?) Fe/S/Cinnini and Vi/S/caeni 
or Biscayeni, are also names which it is possible are 
compound names from two tribes, one of which 
were Osci. There may possibly yet be found 
traces of some of the languages of these old na- 
tions in the patois of some of the remote mountains 
in Italy or Greece." 

J. H. F. " The several labours of Hercules were 
each the extinction of some form of heresy or super- 
stition ; thus the destruction of the Mares of Dio- 
medes was the eradication of some Molochian 
superstition. Possibly so were the labours of 
Perseus. Medusa was the moon ; the sword (harpe, 
which, by the way, is Hebrew) forms the crescent 
moon, and the sack to hold the head is the inter- 
lunium. A head referred by some authors to the 
moon, and by others to the Medusa (probably, 
as just observed, both being the same) is borne 
on the coins of Camarina in Sicily ; Camar in 
Maltese (probably in Phoenician also) signifies the 
moon." 

I will now resume the extracts from his letters. 
To his brother George he wrote, on the 3 ist January, 

1835:— 

" I was very much pleased with Anne s and 
Susan's verses. They are reallysingularly good. The 



JOHN HO OK HAM FKERE. 269 

description of Coleridge 1 is perfect. Did you show 
them to Rogers ? No, you were afraid he would 
think you an old fool of a father. If you have an 
opportunity, show them to him upon my recom- 
mendation. I will incur the responsibility as an 
uncle." 

In a letter dated the 9th of April, 1835, he writes 
to his brother Edward, who was in the habit of 
using a style and carbonized copying paper, which 
often tired the eyesight of his correspondents, but 
who had written him one letter with ordinary pen 
and ink : — 

"Malta, April yh, 1835. 

" My dear Ned, 

" I have to acknowledge the receipt 
of yours of the 2nd March, written with a ' real pen, 
real ink, and real paper.' What is the nonsense 
which that puts me in mind of? Do you recollect? 
It was something of poor Bob Clive's at Putney " 
[where they had been at school together], " and his 
writing-master at home, Mr. Skelton by name, 

1 On the Poet Coleridge. 

Thou reverend good old man ! I see thee still ; 
Thy silver locks, thy countenance benign, 
Beaming with inward light, and with divine 
Charity, that nor doth nor thinketh ill, 
Thy voice yet seems my raptur'd sense to fill, 
Discoursing sweetly to the soul and ear, 
Like some fair stream, majestically slow, 
Aye bearing onwards with unwearying flow, 
Ever uncheck'd, and wandering at will. 

Oh ! if thy mighty spirit, to this shore 
Of earth confin'd, where others do but creep, 
Launch'd forth so far into the boundless deep, 
And gather'd of rich pearls so large a store, 
What depths are thine now freely to explore ! 
The source of light and life, the fountain clear 
Of wisdom, open to thee; whence with joy 
To hear this sentence, " Well thou didst employ 
Thy talents — to thee shall be given more." — S. F. 



270 MEMOIR OF 

whose figure he used to draw on the blank pages of 
his books. . . It is not the less true that the sight 
of your real ink was a great refreshment to my eyes. 
So much for the form and material characters of 
your letter. For the substance, I am truly glad 
that your bargain for Turton 1 is approaching to a 
satisfactory termination, the more so as I trust it 
will enable you to inspect us here. Do not be afraid 
of the summer, it is all nonsense. Ask William ! 
he will tell you ; and I can tell you that I am never 
so well here as in the height of summer, and our con- 
stitutions, I take it, are not much unlike. Take 
example by the old Welsh mules which are sent 
over to the West Indies, where they are found to 
grow young again. You will see how I am ruining 
myself with building (I dare say you will be told so, 
if you remain in England). I built my first piece of 
wall simply by the Lesbian rule, as Aristotle de- 
scribes it ; but I have since made a discovery of the 
true Pelasgic method, and am finishing the other 
end of it like a perfect Cyclops, such as Neptune 
employed in building the walls of Troy. I have not 
time to explain this, so you must come and judge 
for yourself on the spot, and stop my hand if you 
think I am likely to do myself any real injury by 
the expense, for my architect is persuading me to 
build a small Doric temple, though the cost, even 
according to his own statement, will not be less than 
fifteen pounds ; and it will cost me, I believe, seven 
or eight to finish my wall in a way that Sir W. Gell 
would approve. 

" I have been running on with nonsense (from 
which you will only collect that I am well, and that 
I shall be very glad to see you), while you are look- 
ing for some account of dear S — " [a niece who had 
gone out to Malta for her health]. "She is the most 
cheerful creature under suffering that ever was, and 



1 Turton Tower, near Bolton, in Lancashire, which his 
brother was about to sell. 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 271 

the delight of everybody, including even that old uncle 
of hers. You know ' she is living with an old 
uncle.' " 

Speaking of a young couple who were about to 
marry on very narrow means, he adds : — 

" With respect to means, if they will be content 

to live like poor gentle folks like and , 

they may do very well. The opposite line, that of 
living genteel upon a small income, is the vilest 
slavery, and never answers." 

" Malta, August 6t/i, 1835. 

"My dear Bartle, 

" Bandinell has met with some 
difficulties at the Treasury, the nature of which I 
do not very well understand. It seems that I am 
'to state the period during which I have been free 
from office, and from which I claim the pension.' 
Now these two periods are not the same, for my 
pension was granted on my first return from Spain, 
and on my being sent there again, my pension was 
not stopped, and I had no fixed allowance as a 
minister (as in so confused a state of things it was 
hardly possible to fix on any amount which might 
not be extravagant or insufficient) ; but I was left 
at liberty to draw for necessary expenses, a liberty 
which you know I used with great moderation, con- 
ceiving, as I did, that anything like the usual display 
of foreign ministers would appear offensive in the 
midst of the general distress. 

" Such is the history of my pension ; but having 
no papers or memoranda to which I can refer, it is 
impossible for me to make it strictly chronological. 
If this should be required, you, perhaps, would assist, 
and you and Bandinell together would draw up a 
certificate in the form in which I ought to send it. 
I am now two quarters in arrear, and should be very 
glad of a little money. 

" I am much obliged to you for the trouble you 



272 MEMOIR OF 

have taken about Theognis. I flatter myself it will 
show the Germans that an Englishman can do 
something, though not exactly in their way. 

" Pray thank Hamilton for his care about my dilet- 
tanti books, and tell him that I shall be anxious to 
show every civility to his friend, Captain Stodart." 1 

" Malta, May $th, 1836. 
" The same packet by which my brother Edward 
arrived here on the 19th of last month brought me 

your letter recommending Mr. W , who arrived 

here afterwards in the ' Manchester ' steamer, and 
is now on his way home with four giraffes, and Mr. 

and Mrs. B on board. I have been as civil to 

them all (the giraffes included, for I called upon 
them — the giraffes — twice) as I could possibly be, 
and if you see them they will, I trust (with the 
exception of the giraffes), make a favourable report 

of their reception here. I liked Mr. W very 

much, and was delighted (as everybody else was) 

with Mrs. B . They are roaming in quest of 

health for him, and have already passed two winters 
in Madeira. I am in hopes that they may be per- 
suaded to pass the next winter here. I have pro- 
mised to be ' as obliging and attentive as possible.' 
It would be a great thing for the island if some real 
gentlemen of fortune would take to living here, and 
it would be a great boon to 

" Your scrubby but affectionate brother, 

"J. H. FRERE." 

" I wish some morning, when you are in good 
spirits, that you would call on Mrs. B ." 

To his sister-in-law, he wrote, November 8th, 
1836:— 

" Pray thank my brother for the trouble he has 
taken in writing to Chantrey. I have sent a part 

1 The unfortunate traveller who afterwards, with Arthur 
Conolly, perished in captivity at Bokhara. 



JOHN HO OKH AM FREKE. 273 

of his letter to Lord Holland. Poor John is in 
quarantine within sight of this window, and in 
quarantine he must remain, oscillating between 
this place and Alexandria, till his friends are able 
to clap an epaulette on his shoulders. . . . We have 
all kinds of people here: the Prince de Joinville, 
Louis Philippe's younger son, and the Principe di 
Capua, the King of Naples' younger brother, with 
the Irish lady whom he has married. Count Matu- 
tiwitz is just gone, and John will have to convey 
Lord and Lady Brudenell to Alexandria, from 
whence they proceed to Bombay with a letter of 
recommendation to Mr. William Frere, of the Sud- 
der Adawlut, after which they are to go to Delhi or 
Meerut, where they will have the advantage, pro- 
bably, of seeing Mr. Richard Frere. Nonsense ! " 

In 1836 Lord Melbourne's Government appointed 
a Commission to examine into a vast number of 
complaints received by the Colonial Office regarding 
the administration of the laws, and of public affairs 
generally, in Malta. Many of the abuses and evils 
— political, economical, and social — to be investi- 
gated and reported upon, seemed to Mr. Frere 
beyond the reach of any remedy which such a com- 
mission could recommend, or any government ap- 
ply ; and he had some fears of the effects on the 
island population of the exaggerated expectations 
raised by what the Duke of Wellington is said to 
have likened to " an attempt to frame a constitution 
on the British model for a line-of-battle ship." 

Both the Commissioners were men of distinguished 
ability and literary mark, the senior being Mr. Austin, 
the celebrated jurist, who was accompanied by his 
wife, already well known as an accomplished autho- 
ress. The junior member was Mr. (afterwards Sir) 
George Cornewall Lewis, whose death in 1863, after 
he had filled the offices of Chancellor of the Exche- 
quer, Home Secretary, and Secretary of State for 
War, in Lord Palmerston's administrations from 

T 



274 MEMOIR OF 

1855, has not yet ceased to be regretted by con- 
temporary statesmen of all parties. 

Notwithstanding the difference of their ages — 
for Mr. Lewis was then barely thirty — and, in many 
respects, of their political views, Mr. Frere formed 
the highest opinion of him as a politician, as well 
as a man of letters. Speaking of him, he said, 
" Lewis is one of the very few really learned Eng- 
lishmen I have met of late years, and his fairness is 
as remarkable as his learning. It is a great pity he 
is such a desperate Whig ; but I think, if we could 
have kept him in Malta a little longer, we might 
have made a very decent Tory of him. I do not 
think he was very well pleased with his first essay 
in constitution-making." It is fair to add, however, 
that the constitution, and the reforms generally, 
which the Commission recommended, seem to have 
answered most of the purposes for which they were 
designed, even if they did not fulfil the somewhat 
extravagant expectations of those who called for 
the Commission. Writing to Sir Edmund Head 
soon after arriving in Malta, Mr. Lewis said : — 
" The two main evils of Malta are — for the upper 
classes practical exclusion from office, and brutal 
treatment by the English in society ; and for the 
lower classes, over-population. . . Already carubas 
have become an article of food ; and if the increase 
goes much further, the people must starve if they 
are not fed by English charity. I have seen Hook- 
ham Frere, who found himself in Malta sixteen 
years ago, at his wife's death, and has forgotten to 
return to England. He has translated four plays 
of Aristophanes, and will, I imagine, publish them." 
Mr. Lewis appears, from his subsequent letters, 
to have been at first much disappointed in what he 
saw of Mr. Frere, who, he thought, had completely 
rusted in his long exile. Probably Mr. Frere had 
expressed to him his own doubts of the Commission 
being able to effect all that the sanguine young 



JOHN HOOK HAM FRERE. 275 

Liberal thought possible ; and \% is not unlikely 
that, as time proved the task to be more difficult 
and tedious than it had at first appeared, Mr. Lewis 
got to entertain more respect for what he had pre- 
viously regarded as Mr. Frere's antiquated notions. 

On January 18th, 1837, Mr. Frere wrote to his 
brother Bartle : — 

" [John] is the bearer of a postscript to my Theo- 
gnis and a title page — which took me more time 
than any other ten pages in the book. 

" My chief difficulty in publishing, is this — that 
the world is at this moment mad with political 
excitement, and everything is supposed to have 
some political bearing. 

" Now Theognis denounces the abuses and op- 
pressions which terminated (as he predicted) in a 
revolution, he also deplores the violences of the 
revolution which followed. 

" I wish therefore ... to publish it simply as a 
school book, renouncing all the fashionable Whig, 
and Tory, and Radical booksellers, and betaking 
myself to a publisher who is simply scholastic." 

"March II, 1837. 

" I shall be very glad to shew any civility to any 
person recommended by you, and shall look out on 
board the 'Vanguard' for Mr. J. E. Johnston. 

" Is Sir Alexander Johnston the same man who 
is so zealous and liberal a promoter of Oriental 
investigations ? I must in return trouble you with 
some commissions. 

" Will you tell Rodwell to send me the first 
volume (the last published) of Clinton's ' Fasti Hel- 
lenici,' together with Thirlwall's ' History of Greece,' 
and Boeckh's ' Public Economy of Athens.' I have 
not time to write to Hamilton, and to thank him, 
as I ought to do. 

" I am really, as they say here, tutto confuso with 
his kindness and attention. 



276 MEMOIR OF 

".You see him I imagine so often, that it will not 
be giving you a very troublesome commission to 
desire you to say for me (I might say for us) for 
we have been all indebted to his kindness, how 
sensible we are of it — I myself in particular. 

" So you are a subscriber to the Jini bronzes, and 
you were right ! What perfectly beautiful things 
they are ! 

" People on the packet day run away from writing 
their own letters, and go about visiting, hindering 
Others — o Kai kfj,o\ vuv\ cruftfisBwEV. 

" If you cannot make this out, no more could 
I make out the inscription on the polychrome 
temple, till Mr. Lewis, who had taken more pains 
with it, tranquillized my mind by informing me it 
was nonsense. 

" With nonsense then I conclude, 

***** 

" We are all here as comfortable as possible." 

"April yd, 1837. 
"... It is, as you say, rather a shame in a biblio- 
polish point of view, not to have finished those 
poor Frogs ; perhaps I may surprise you some day, 
by the sudden exertion of writing out the half-dozen 
remaining hexameters and writing the notes, (if 
I can remember what they were intended to be,) 
which are referred to in the text already printed. 
Mr. Lewis, who is here as Commissioner, and who 
is a complete scholar, is urging me to print the 
Knights at the Government Printing Office, and 
offers to superintend it. I do not know — to say the 
truth, I wish I could clear my mind of those clas- 
sicalities, which, between ourselves, have a tendency, 
more or less, to make heathens of us all, at least 
to weaken and confuse those impressions, which 
ought to be uppermost in the mind (Etatis atmo 68. 
" Nothing has been done to ' Theognis,' and nothing 
is required; it might even go to the press as it is, but 



JOHN II 00 KH AM FRERE. 277 

there are some sentences, here and there, which I 
should think it might be better to scratch out. 
" Believe me, my dear Bartle, 

" Very affectionately yours, 

"J. H. Frere. 

" P.S. — Pray give my best thanks to W. Rose for 
his recollection of me. I was much pleased with 
it, and with many of the verses. 1 Hamilton's 
' Clouds ' were borrowed of me, by Mr. Lewis, 
before I had read them myself. I therefore as yet 
can only thank him for having thought of me." 

" Carnival Monday, 1837. 

"... I have another copy [of ' Theognis '] 
here, in which I should wish to make some correc- 
tions, and if you, or any judicious friend (Hamilton 
for instance, not omitting Ainslie, whose taste is 
perfect), would point out any desirable alterations 
or omissions, I should feel much obliged to them. 

" But the copy in your hands is in the mean- 
while sufficient to enable the publisher to form his 
estimate, and to make an offer. 

" As a last resort, or perhaps in some respects as 
good as any, I might print at Eton, by the successor 
of the noble Jos. Pope." 

'■'■June 2, 1837. 
" We are all well, which perhaps you may be 
glad to hear, for it is possible that strange exag- 
gerated accounts may reach England. The influ- 
enza has reached us, and has spread with extra- 
ordinary rapidity through the fleet and troops, and 
into the town ; but I do not hear that it has proved 
fatal, as yet, to any body : its period is from three 



1 This refers to the privately-printed " Rhymes " by William 
Stewart Rose (Brighton, 1837), containing the Epistle to Mr. 
Frere, already quoted. 



278 MEMOIR OF 

days, in some cases, to about a week, and is accom- 
panied with a good deal of pain and extreme 
weakness. Susan has had something very like it, 
though not much differing from the kind of colds 
which she has had once before this winter. I have 
had a cold too, such as I never had before. . . . 

" So much for the sanitary question. 

" I have not seen poor Sir W. Scott's life, and if 
you pass by Rodwell's any day, would be obliged 
to you to tell him to send it me. 

" There is something in the atmosphere and the 
state of the weather which is, I believe, the origin 
of this general complaint ; a ship from Tunis, 
where the disorder had not appeared, was attacked 
with it on approaching the island, and those who 
are not attacked are sensible of extreme languor 
and oppression. 

" It seems as if the elements were generally in a 
state of discomposure. But enough of this." 

In the summer of this year, while the Commis- 
sion was still at Malta, the island was visited by a 
frightful epidemic of cholera, which carried off 
2,000 people in five weeks, and Mr. Frere suffered 
in many ways from the strain which his exertions 
to mitigate the general distress and alarm imposed 
on him. His sister, writing in September, after the 
disease had somewhat abated, describes the effect 
as having been so great as to make her fear that he 
was suddenly falling into old age. She speaks 
gratefully of the relief he had found in Mr. Lewis's 
society, and in the revived interest with which her 
brother had returned to his Translations, conse- 
quent on his young friend having volunteered to 
superintend their being printed at the Maltese 
Government press, though she says she has not yet 
been able quite to forgive the Commission for 
having abolished the House of Industry, the place 
of refuge for poor girls, and the Ospizio for old 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 279 

people, and fears that "all our charitable institu- 
tions will be absorbed into a hateful sort of general 
poor-rate." 

Mr. Bartle Frere refers to the aid thus tendered 
by Mr. Lewis in several letters written in 1837, in 
one of which, after saying that two London pub- 
lishers had declined to undertake to print the trans- 
lation of Aristophanes at their own risk, he urges 
his brother to publish it himself, " even if it cost 
him fifty pounds," reminding him of the consolation 
which a friend of theirs had found in paying a 
heavy printer's bill for her son's unsaleable publica- 
tions, "that it was a very creditable way of spending 
one's money ! " 

In a subsequent letter he adds: — " In my opinion, 
you had better accept at once Mr. Lewis's offer, 
and print at the Government press. You will be 
then laying out your money, not only for a credit- 
able purpose (as I suggested in my last), but will be 
doing something for the good of the island, whose 
export trade in this article of books, I suppose, is 
far overbalanced by those which you import. By 
the bye, if I was not enjoined to send no books but 
what are ordered by you, I should have told Rod- 
well to forward to you the two first volumes of 
Lockhart's ' Life of Scott ; ' the second only comes 
out to-day, and I see your name frequently men- 
tioned in it, in conjunction with G. Ellis and 
Canning, in terms in which one might not com- 
plain of being handed down to posterity ; for this 
is a book which ivill go to posterity, and also, I 
suppose, have a more extensive sale at its first 
appearance than any other modern work." 

With the help which Mr. Lewis had kindly offered, 
the translation of four plays of Aristophanes was at 
length put through the press at Malta, though with- 
out the marking of the dominant accents, or other 
indications of the rhythm, which Mr. Frere had 
contemplated as aids to a better understanding of 



280 MEMOIR OF 

the effect of the original. He found that, with the 
limited resources of the local press, the correction of 
typographical errors in the accents would have in- 
volved a greater amount of labour than, at his age, 
it was possible to give to such a task ; and he some- 
what reluctantly yielded to the advice of Mr. Lewis, 
who judged that, though careful scholars would 
appreciate the assistance to be derived from an 
accentuated text, readers in general would be more 
likely to be deterred from perusal by the unusual 
aspect of the page, than to be aided by the addi- 
tional labour bestowed on it. 

But, though printed, the work was not published, 
and was consequently inaccessible to the public, and 
its merits were very imperfectly appreciated by the 
world of scholars till Mr. Lewis, some years after- 
wards (1847), gave, in the "Classical Museum," 1 
very ample extracts, accompanied by much kindly 
and judicious criticism. In his introductory remarks, 
he says : — " The reproduction of the comedies of 
Aristophanes in a modern language seems almost a 
hopeless task. The endless variety of his style and 
metres, the exuberance of his witty imagination, 
the richness and flexibility of the Attic language in 
which he wrote, and the perpetual byplay of allu- 
sions, often intimated merely by a pun, a meta- 
phor, or a strange new compound, to the statesmen, 
poets, political events and institutions, manners and 
domestic history of his times, appear to make it 
equally difficult to execute a poetical version which 
shall adhere to the letter or render the spirit of the 
original." After noticing the imperfections of 
Mitchell's translation, he adds : — " Mr. Frere (who 
had many years ago exercised his poetical powers 
upon Aristophanes, and who wrote a fair and, 
indeed, favourable critique of the first volume of 
Mr. Mitchell's translation, in the 'Quarterly Review') 

1 No. ii. p. 238. 



JOHN HOOK HAM I MERE. 281 

judged rightly that the success of previous trans- 
lators had not rendered his efforts superfluous. He 
has accordingly been induced to print, for private 
distribution, his versions of the 'Acharnians,' the 
'Knights,' the 'Birds,' and the 'Frogs.' If anybody 
was likely to meet with success in this undertaking, 
it was the author of the admirable imitation of 
Darwin in the 'Anti-Jacobin' — an imitation which 
bids fair to be much more long-lived than its 
original — and of the excellent poem of Whistlecraft, 
the model on which Lord Byron wrote his ' Beppo,' 
but which, by some accident of popular taste, has 
never obtained a reputation equal to its merits. 
And, in our opinion, Mr. Frere's success as a trans- 
lator of Aristophanes has been greater than might 
have been reasonably anticipated. Of the plays 
which he has selected, three, the 'Knights,' the 
' Birds,' and the ' Frogs,' are certainly the most 
difficult which a translator could deal with. More- 
over, what he has undertaken he has performed ; 
the entire play is rendered, so that the merely 
English reader can form a complete judgment of 
the original : no scenes are omitted as unmanage- 
able. Of the four plays, the translations of the 
' Frogs ' and ' Knights' appear to us to be the best : 
the latter, in particular, gives an excellent idea of 
this masterpiece of comic invective ; the foivoTyg of 
which was never exceeded by any of the vitupera- 
tive effusions of those great masters of the art, the 
Attic orators. 

" As the work is not published for sale, we pro- 
pose to give such full selections as will enable the 
reader to judge for himself of the goodness of the 
translation. Before, however, we proceed to do so, 
we repeat that the difficulty of worthily representing 
Aristophanes in a modern language can scarcely be 
over-estimated, and it can only be appreciated by 
one who is acquainted with the original. The 
Germans, as far as we know, are almost the only 



282 MEMOIR OF 

continental nation who have attempted any other 
translation of Aristophanes than a literal prose 
version for the use of school-boys. 1 All poetical 
translations from the ancient classical languages are 
difficult ; as the failure of great poets (such as 
Dryden and Pope), and the rarity of even tolerable 
success, evince. But a poetical translation of 
Aristophanes is peculiarly difficult. Comedy is 
harder of translation than tragedy ; it is easier to 
copy the lofty and serious than the ridiculous and 
familiar. That Menander's grace and elegance was 
not easily transferred into another language is 
proved by the comparative failure of Terence, whom 
Julius Caesar, doubtless disposed to speak of him as 
highly as he could, only ventured to call half a 
Menander. If, however, the equable flow and domestic 
plots of Menander were hard to imitate, what is to 
be thought of the grotesque, fantastic, and local 
humour of Aristophanes ? The translation of Goethe's 
' Faust' is no easy task, as many modern poets 
have found. It has not, we believe, been attempted 
in French or Italian verse. But ' Faust ' is far less 
obscure, and less tinged with the colours of time 
and place, than the ' Knights ' or the ' Frogs.' 
Moreover, there is an affinity in modern metres and 
forms of words which renders the transfusion of a 
poem from one living language to another easier 
than the transfusion from a dead language." 

After giving copious extracts from the four plays, 
the article concludes with some criticism on Mr. 
Frere's translation of Theognis, which was printed 
some years after the Aristophanes. 

In August, 1837, while the cholera was still 

1 The " Biographie Universelle," torn. ii. p. 455, states that 
in the complete translation of the plays of Aristophanes by 
Poinsinet de Sivry, some plays are translated in verse, and 
others in prose : and that the translation of Brottier (the 
nephew of the translator of Tacitus) is entirely in prose. We 
have not seen either translation. 



JOHN HO O KH AM FRERE. 283 

devastating the island, Mr. Frere wrote to his 
brother Bartle : — 

" Not having been able to sleep, and having 
laboured under a paroxysm of laziness all yester- 
day, and it being now light enough to enable me to 
see what I am writing, and owing to Susan's inflam- 
mation in her eyes, devolving upon me the task of 
writing to everybody who may be supposed to care 
about us, I sit down with pleasure (or more pro- 
perly stand up at my desk) to inform you that we 
are hitherto alive and well, except as above excepted. 
. . . . The cholera is on the decline in point of 
numbers, but within these few days has been more 
frequent among the higher class of Maltese, and 
among the English. As for myself, when a disorder 
is going about, I rarely get it till everybody else 
has done with it. Susan has had her equivalent in 
the influenza, which prevailed as unaccountably as 
the cholera during all the singular cold wet weather 
which we experienced this spring. It was with a 
sudden burst of extreme heat on the 9th of June 
that the cholera first broke out, and (as is usual with 
epidemics on their first appearance) was rapidly 
fatal. It is strange that (as if it had introduced 
itself into a new region) the same rapidity of execu- 
tion is visible in the class into which it has now found 
its way. I take what care I can of myself, and 
some care of others. My only method is to be very 
moderate in everything, so here is a very moderate 
letter." 

On 20th September, 1838, he wrote : — 

"My dear Bartle, 

" I shall be happy to show any civility 
in my power to your friend Sir H. Willoughby. I 
say in my power, for I have found it necessary to 
give up dining out, or entertaining large parties at 
home, so that my company is pretty much restricted 
to the few persons I can venture to ask, either on 
the same day, or the day before. 



284 MEMOIR OF 

" Do not imagine that I am very bad, but as I am 
indebted for my quasi-recovery to this mode of 
life, I do not run the risk of altering it. 

"Temple writes me word that Mr. Dykes (the 
other Lord of the Manor of Roydon) is dead, and 
that there is an opportunity of purchasing it, with 
90 acres of land. I do not want the land ; but if 
you were inclined to purchase land, we might make 
a joint bargain, for the Manor might, in troublesome 
hands, become a source of annoyance. 

" I am glad to hear so good an account of W. 
Rose." 

His sister never entirely recovered from the effects 
of the illness above mentioned, and in the autumn 
of 1838 he became much alarmed by her failing 
health. Her home had been in his house since 
their mother's death, twenty-five years previous. 
A great part of the few letters he now wrote was 
devoted to allaying in others the anxiety which he 
could not himself cease to feel on her account. 
After dwelling on this subject in a letter to his 
brother George, dated November 15, 1838, he 
writes : — 

" According to your desire, I return Dr. Words- 
worth's, and beg you to return my thanks to his 
son l for his obliging present of the ' Pompeian 
Inscriptions,' which have amused me a good deal, 
though some of them are puzzles to me. 

" I was glad to hear of our cousin Watlington's - 



1 Dr. Christopher Wordsworth, now Bishop of Lincoln. 
He had lately married Mr. Frere's niece. 

2 A connexion of their family, who had applied to Mr. G. 
Frere for some information regarding their common descent 
from Dr. John Dee, Queen Elizabeth's astrologer. Dr. Dee's 
great grand-daughter, Margery Dee, married Mr. Flowerdew, 
and had two daughters ; Jane, who married Mr. Stephen 
Pomfrett, and was Mr. Frere's great-grandmother, on his 
mother's side ; and Elizabeth, who married Mr. W. Watling- 



JOHN HOOK HAM FEE RE. 285 

prosperity. I had not been aware that there were 
any ties of consanguinity between us. 

" I remember a Mrs. Flowerdew, my mother's 
great aunt, a tall, very old lady, dressed in black, 
whom I used to like, partly, perhaps, because she 
used to regale me with savoury biscuits ; but my 
recollection of her is as of a very nice old person, 
who was exceedingly fond of my mother, and 
always delighted to see us. She was unmarried ; 
the daughter of a Mr. Flowerdew, who had married 
a Miss Dee, a descendant (I do not know in what 
degree) of the mathematician and hermetic philoso- 
pher. There are some verses of hers on her separa- 
tion from her intended husband, Mr. Flowerdew, 
who, upon some mercantile emergency (the seizure, 
I think, of English property by the Spanish Govern- 
ment), had been called away to Cadiz. The verses 
are in the cabinet at Roydon. 1 

" Mrs. Flowerdew, whom I recollect, was old 
enough to recollect the alarm of the Irish massacre 



ton. Dr. Dee's silver Divining Cup is now in the possession 
of R. Temple Frere, Esq., to whose father (Temple Frere, see 
ante, p. 151) it was given by his mother. 

By the Will of Francis Dee, Bishop of Peterborough, 1638, 
who was a son of Dr. John Dee, a boy educated at Merchant 
Taylor's School, or Peterborough School, being of the kindred 
or name of the bishop, is entitled to a scholarship or fellow- 
ship at St. John's College, Cambridge. [See " Wilson's His- 
tory of Merchant Taylor's School," p. 1170.] 

1 The subjoined are the verses. The original is written in 
a clear round hand, presumably Margery Dee's, and is marked 
on the outside in Jane [Hookham] Frere's handwriting : — 

" My Great-Grandmother's curious Composition." 

1 The World a garden is wherein I walk 
but what my heart doth muse I dar.not talk 

2 For when I looked on the flowers which grow 
I spy.d a jelly flower that grew so Low — 

3 That when I did atempt the flower to gain 
great flouds of water drove me back again 



286 MEMOIR OF 

— not the real massacre, but the strange alarm 
spread through the city by the Whigs, to try the 
temper of the people, and to ascertain the extent 
of their gullibility. 

" There was a story of poor Mrs. F.'s absence of 



4 With bended head it sometims then did Crouch 
and with a Silent Voice did Crave a touch 

5 But of my hand which I Could not deny- 
but was much pleas.d to see its modisty 

6 For often with a blush the Leaves were dy.d 
as if humility did strive to hide 

7 Those Charmin graces which I must admire 
Alltho I dare not say its my desire 

8 To Call it mine alas that were a Crime 
which nothing Could Excuse but length of time 

9 Yet had I ventur.d to Express my mind 
but that I fear.d to raise a Storm of wind 

io Might of this tender plant then me deprive 
or blast it so that it should never thrive 

1 1 Thus all my thoughts did but increase my fears 
thus musingly I stood for many Years 

12 At last — by an invisable hand 

it was transplanted in another Land 

13 That the warm sunshine of prosperity 
rrlight make it grow but ah how mournfull I 

14 Did seek a place where I might vent my grief 
which to discover would be Some reliefe 

15 All mortalls terour which Is Called grim death 
I did invoke to Ease of my breath 

16 Then the silent grave might me secure 
from all those Sorrows which I did indure 

17 The tedious Nights I spent in bitter Cries 
my days in piercing Sighs and fixed Eyes 

1 8 I look.t so long I allmost lost my Sight 
because I could not look on my delight 

19 Reason did bid me then forget the flower 
but I could never yet obtain that power 

20 And sure my Life had Ended with the day 
but that I found there was no other way 



JOHN HO OK II AM FRERE. 287 

mind ; how, having been down into the kitchen on 
a Sunday morning, she was seen proceeding to 
church with a knife in her hand instead of a fan. 

" This is all I can recollect at present, and with it 
I return Mr. Watlington's letter, in order that the 



21 Which Could advance this flower or it improv.d 
whose hapiness more than myself I Lov.d 

22 O heavens doe not regard my moan 
if it is better thare let it alone 

23 Parents and friends did bring me Floria's Bower 
and ask.d me if there was not there a flower 

24 Which I could like to place within my breast 
but still to them I made it my request 

25 That I might have the leave but to refuse 

all those rich flowers which they would have me Chuse 

26 But they and all that knew me with one Voice 
did then intreat me for to make my Choice 

27 Out of those flowers whose great worth might tempt 
the most resolved heart for to relent 

28 Its true I did confess that their desert 

did merit ten times more than my poor heart 

29 And if I had a heart for to bestow 

I Could not Count it wisdom to say no 

30 With frowns and Checks they call'd me then blind fool 
and with a thousand threats my heart did Cool 

31 When I had broke those bonds asunder 
to the world I then became a wonder. 

32 But in such woes as these a pride I take 
because that I do bear them for the sake 

33 Of that rare flower which Could I but obtain 
all worldly Losses I should Count a gain 

34 When I am most alone methinks I hear 
some secret whisper bid me not despair 

35 And may I hope that I shall live to see 
this jelly flower again return to me 

36 Then dying heart revive that I may plead 

to swift pace time yet to make greater Speed 

37 And bring to me that happy hour and then 
this grief will turn to joys. Ah but when." 



288 MEMOIR OF 

two documents, if you think them worth preserving, 
may repose together." 

"Malta, January nth, 1839. 
" A hard wind blowing into the mouth of the 
harbour detained the packet, and allows me time to 
thank you for your almanack, and to request you to 
send a duplicate for a purpose which, as before in 
my letter to my sister, I shall leave her to guess. 

"I do not exactly recollect what I wrote upon 
occasion of our cousin Watlington's genealogical 
communications. I think it related chiefly to the 
Dees and the Flowerdews ; but I believe I omitted 
to mention one fact, harsh-sounding and unwelcome 
to the genealogical ear — one of the Flowerdews was 
hanged — durum verbum. You will say, ' What is to 
be done with him ? ' But, ho ! we ought to en- 
deavour, if possible, to trace our lineage to him, and 
hitch him in as a collateral ; for it was, in fact, a 
most creditable occurrence, and one upon which 
(since he would undoubtedly have been dead before 
this time) we ought rather to congratulate our- 
selves. He was, in fact, hanged (I dislike the word 
as applied to an ancestor) ; but it was by the rebels 
in the time of Kett the Tanner — the Furor Norvi- 
censis, as it was called by the learned. 1 

" It is wrong, however, to be singular in any way; 
and since candour towards rebels is so much in 
fashion, I must not omit to state a probability in 
their behalf, implying that the family were not very 
liberal or popular, their house, standing at some 
distance from the road, on the right hand as you go 
from Hetherset to Norwich, was, as it is now, known 
by the name of ' Mock-beggar Hall.' 

" The question, then, to be determined, in behalf 
of omnipotent candour, on the one hand, and family 
honour on the other, reduces itself to a question of 

1 Temp. Edw. VI. 



JOHN HOOKHAM FEE RE. 289 

time : ' Is the name ancient ? Can it be traced to 
a period anterior to the time of Kett the Tanner ? ' 
In that case the presumed illiberality of the owner 
might be pleaded in palliation of the violence of 
which he was the victim. Or was it imposed at a 
time immediately subsequent, when the resentment 
of the family, and their disgust against the lower 
orders (arising from the incident before mentioned), 
might have rendered them less charitable and hos- 
pitable than we find that peoples' ancestors were. 
Or, lastly, was the name given when it was reduced 
to a farm-house (retaining, as it does, the appearance 
of a gentleman's mansion, as was before observed) 
at a distance from the road, and consequently 
alluring vagrants to a fruitless application ? These 
are the points which can never be cleared up, unless 
by the investigation of some local antiquary, whose 
great ability has manifested itself chiefly in the elu- 
cidation of similar difficulties. And though we may 
delight to indulge our fancy in the contemplation of 
those comfortable old times, yet, situated as we are, 
certainty is in most instances unattainable. 

" I must now conclude, for the wind that detained 
this packet is also detaining one for Alexandria, by 
which I have more than one letter which I ought to 
write." 

A few days after this letter was written, his 
anxieties regarding his sister were terminated by 
her death, on the 18th January, 1839. She died, as 
she had lived, a bright example of every Christian 
and domestic virtue. Her brother laid her near his 
wife, and close to the spot which he had long before 
marked as that where he wished himself to rest. 
None were now left near him of his own family or 
generation ; and for some months after her death 
there were many duties connected with her letters, 
her property, and the poor around, to whom she had 
long been his willing and most judicious almoner, 
which made him feel his loss very acutely. 

U 



290 MEMOIR OF 

He wrote on the subject to his brother George on 
the 22nd January, enclosing a detailed account of 
his sister's last illness and of her death. 

" Little did I imagine when I was sending my 
absurd letter of the I ith, and at a time when my 
sister appeared, in the opinion of those who saw her 
that same day, to be in better health than she had 
been for a long time past, that the following morn- 
ing should bring upon us the beginning of the dis- 
tress and confusion which has since overwhelmed us. 

" The sad narrative which I enclose is substan- 
tially accurate, at least as far as my own recollection, 
compared with that of others, would enable me to 
make it so 

" The last sad ceremony is appointed for the day 
after to-morrow, in conformity with the wish of the 
Governor, who expressed a desire to be present ; it 
will be exactly similar to that which took place 
eight years ago, in the same month, and almost the 
same day. The month of January, if I should live 
to see it again, will in future be a most melancholy 
one for me. 

" You probably are well informed respecting her 
will : I have no knowledge or even guess about it. 
I lost an opportunity of inquiring at a time when I 
told her, about nine months ago, that it was my in- 
tention to provide for her future, a becoming and 
comfortable residence here ; but in fact the idea of 
surviving her myself did not once cross my mind. 

" During her sickness I was unwilling to alarm 
her ; and when she herself became — I will not say 
alarmed — but aware of the approach of death, I 
would not divert her mind from thoughts which it 
was occupied with by the recollection of any worldly 
concerns, from which they had appeared during 
the whole course of her illness to be entirely ab- 
stracted." 

About a year before this time, Lady Erroll's 
niece, Miss Blake, who had always lived with her 



JOHN HOOKHAM FEE RE. . 291 

aunt from her childhood, and had been to Mr. Frere 
as a daughter, had married Lord Hamilton Chiches- 
ter, for whom Mr. Frere had the warmest regard. 
They were able to live much with him at Malta, and 
nothing was ever wanting to his comfort which 
their perfectly filial affection and constant watchful 
attention could ensure to him. 

On February 21st, 1839, he wrote to his brother 
George : — 

" I have again to perform the melancholy task of 
sending back the letters addressed to my poor sis- 
ter. The papers which you mention as having been 
sent from Hampton Court in 1831, 1 should wish to 
be sent out here by some safe conveyance. Pray, my 
dear George, thank Lizzy for her kind letter, though 
it made me very sad to see the hopes and expecta- 
tion under which it was written 

" Except that we are tolerably well, I do not 
know anything that remains for me to say, unless 
I were to send you the news of this place, which, of 
a sudden, is become a very bustling one." 

"March 20th, 1839. 

" My dear Bartle, 

" I am not very well able to write, having 
been suffering for these three days with a pain in 
my face — a pain which of all incapacitates me the 
most for any exertion. I mention this lest you 
should hear that I had been ill and confined to my 
room, which is true, to this extent, but no further. 
In other respects, I think I have passed through 
this winter better than the last. Accordingly I 
have exhorted Lord and Lady Hamilton to go to 
Rome to see Lady Cadogan, who had wished to see 
us there. I would not venture to go myself, for 
March is the worst month here, and, I should 
imagine, not at all better at Rome. 

" It was otherwise in the times of the Cid — ' El 
invicrno es exido, que el marzo quiere entrar.' 

" And now, my dear Bartle (after a very disagree- 



292 MEMOIR OF 

able interruption, which has occupied me upwards 
of an hour), I return to conclude with a subject 
with which I ought to have begun. I ought to have 
begun to thank you for the admirable lines 1 which 
you have .sent me. I conclude them to be your 
own, though you do not say so distinctly, and there 
is a great deal of poetry in the family. Whosesoever 
they are, they are excellent, and (to use a phrase 
which I am not fond of) appropriate. This, mind, in 
this respect, is singular." .... 

" April 13th, 1839. 
" If the packets which Sir William Eden has had 
the kindness to take charge of, arrive safe at their 
destination, Temple and you will find yourselves 
charged with a task of distribution, scarcely com- 
pensated, I am afraid, by your own individual 

1 Inscribed on his sister's tomb with her epitaph : — 

" Susanna Frere 

Joannis Frere et Joannas Hookham filia 

nata d. conv. S. Pauli, 1777, 

cum olures annos in hac insula commorans 

pietatis et caritatis singulare exemplum prasbuisset, 

ad meliorem vitam transiit 

d. Jan : 18 : anno 1839. 

J : H : Frere defunctas Frater mcerens posuit." 



" Farewell, blest spirit, not for thee the tear 

Steals down this furrow'd cheek — unscath'd hast thou 

Life's thorny path of sin and sorrow trod ; 

But well may they who to thy heart were dear 

Mourn for themselves, unblam'd, yet mourning, bow 

With humble resignation to the rod. 

Thy birth befell upon that hallow'd day 

When burst th' ineffable light upon the Jew 

Of Tarsus, and affirm'd the call divine. 

Upon that rock is cast thy coil of clay 

Where from his arm the great Apostle threw 

Unharm'd the venomous beast — What fitter shrine 

For her whose course through life was ever true 

To the aspiration which the zeal accords 

Of the new convert —those heart-breathing words — 

' Who art thou, Lord ? What wouldst thou have me do ?' 



JOHN BOOK HAM FRERE. 293 

share in the concern ; but the offer was made and 
accepted suddenly, no longer ago than yesterday- 
evening. 

" Hence the copies are sent in a form in which 
they are hardly presentable ; and no more are sent, 
from the apprehension of putting Sir William's 
civility to too severe a trial. I was upon the point 
of having a number of them stitched, but this imme- 
diate offer has anticipated my resolution, which, on 
the other hand, had been delayed by this strange 
weather, which has discouraged me from going to 
Valetta. 

" I have been tolerably well, however, with the 
exception of colds, which I have scrambled through 
rather more nimbly than usual. 

" It occurs to me, that if this letter reaches you 
before the package to which it refers, you will not, 
perhaps, be very well able to guess what it is all 
about. It is about the Acharnians and Knights, 
which I have taken the opportunity of printing 
before the expiration and extinction of the Govern- 
ment Press." 

To his sister-in-law he wrote, on May 2nd, 

1839:- 

" It is very kind of you to grant me an exemption 
from the task of writing, which has been occasion- 
ally, though not so much of late, physically distres- 
sing to me — I mean the posture and the act of 
writing. 

"You have, I hope, by this time received the 
Aristophanes. Having a very sudden and unex- 
pected opportunity, I was obliged to send them in 
sheets as they were, and to trouble my brothers 
Bartle and Temple to get them stitched in a pre- 
sentable form. A copy is directed to Dr. Words- 
worth, and I should have liked to have sent more, in 
case he should so far approve of it as to wish to 
present copies to any of his scholars. . . . 

"John is still here. Lord and Lady Hamilton 



294 MEMOIR OF 

not yet returned. * * I am afraid that I shall 
not have time to write to George, therefore you 
must thank him for his letter. It would be endless 
to write politics, but the prospect of things getting 
worse would not afford me any consolation from the 
anticipated expectation of their getting better. In 
the year '92 I remember to have heard people in 
France administering to themselves the same sort of 
consolation." 

In the same year he wrote to his brother 
Bartle :— 

"May 16th, 1839. 

"My dear Bartle, 

"Our packet is going to start before the arrival 
of the one from England, which will occasion bre- 
vity, the events of the place not being very multifa- 
rious or interesting. 

" Honoria 1 and Lord Hamilton are returned, after 
a short stay at Rome and Naples. Prince George 
has been here about ten days, and starts to-day for 
Corfu. Everybody here has been much pleased 
with him as an easy, unaffected, manly young man. 
There has been here a young Norfolk squire of the 
name of Styleman, an inhabitant of the parts about 
Lynn, a very stout Conservative, whom I have been 
much pleased with, and am sorry that he is going 
away this day. 

"Aristophanes has been stopped for want of 
paper, but is going on again. I have advanced to 
the 48th page of the ' Birds.' 

"Your transcript will be preserved from the 
hands of the printers, and another sent to them 
instead. I have always regarded that transcript as 
one of the highest compliments ever paid me. 

"Honoria tells me that she is writing to you. I 



Lady Hamilton Chichester. 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 295 

cannot think that she will be able to find anything 
to say that I have omitted. No. I have omitted 
to say that Lord Hamilton is much better, and has 
ceased to suffer from rheumatism. 

" Besides she will have to tell you about Rome 

and Naples. She describes poor Lord C as 

quite disabled by gout, a sad declension from the 
nimbleness which you both exhibited in Germany." 

" PietA, May 2,0th, 1839. 

" The enclosed will show you how I have been 
occupied for the last fortnight ; I send it to you 
exclusively, in acknowledgment of your former kind 
service in transcribing it. I thought you would like 
to see your manuscript converted into print ; it 
will be finished, I hope, in another week. 

" I am not aware that anything has occurred here 
which you would care to know. I doubt for instance 
whether it is worth while to mention that Lady 
Strachan has been here, and that her carriage was 
embarked this morning under these windows. Oh, 
yes ! there is a M. Gautier, belonging to the French 
consulate, here, whom we all like very much, and 
who will, I think, be much liked in London, to which 
he is now advanced. 

" He goes in October ; and it would be a great 
relief at that dreary season, if he could find himself 
a member of the Traveller's. Will you and Hamilton 
interest yourselves in his behalf? He leaves this 
place in a few days, to our sincere regret." 

" June 27th. 

" I wish I had an opportunity of sending more 
copies. The one remaining in your hands, ought, I 
think, as he stands foremost in your list (and justly 
so, in consideration of his alphabetical precedence), 
to be given to Sir R. Ainslie. 

" I wish I had one for Hudson Gurney and 



296 MEMOIR OF 

Montgomerie ; but if you see them you must make 
my excuses to them and others for the present." 

"July nth, 1839. 

"The packet from England came in yesterday 
evening, and goes to-day at 12 o'clock. 

" Let me thank you for the trouble you have 
taken in detecting and correcting errata. 

"Most of them are marked in a table of errata, 
already printed ; but as nobody attends to tables of 
errata, I shall have them corrected here by hand ; 
this will save you from the trouble you have been 
so good as to take with them. 

" Some must be sold, not for my profit, but for 

poor Mr. 's, who is entitled to all kindness 

from the lovers of learning, and particularly from 
me, in this instance ; for poor Mr. Coleridge had 
requested in his last will, that some of the tran- 
scripts which I had lent to him might be allowed to 

remain with Mr. . I have done, therefore, 

what I suppose he would have wished, by giving 

Mr. half the impression (250 copies). I have 

desired that 50 should be sent to each of the 
Universities. 

" In the meantime, they, Mr. and Mrs. , 

have agreed with Mr. Pickering, of Chancery Lane, 
whom I have mentioned as a bookseller of curious 
books out of the common line. How they will 
settle it I do not know, but it rests with them : at 
any rate the book will be acceptable for those who 
want it, and inquire for it. Any further popularity 
I should deprecate. 

" I have sent the ' Birds ' to the Bish6p of 
London. 

" I am very sorry for poor Dr. B . I must 

have done." 

" Malta, August 22?id, 1839. 

" I thank you for your very detailed account of 
family matters. The very elements seem to have 



JOHN HO OKI/ AM FKERE. 297 

conspired auspiciously to honour John's nuptials. 1 
In the first place a downpour of rain to put the 
bishop's zeal and good-will to the proof ; and 
secondly, as Lizzy affirms, a most beautiful fine day, 
to do honour to the wedding itself. 

" With respect to copies of Aristophanes, I have 
not been able as yet to find any opportunity ; for 
anything except letters, the communication between 
this place and England is, I think, worse than 
ever." 

11 Oct. 17 th, 1839. 

" I feel much obliged to you for the trouble you 
have taken about the last sheet of the ' Frogs,' 
which I return herewith, with a single correction in 
page j6, and my full assent to your suggestion. 

" I should like to have 100 copies sent out here, 
but how I cannot tell ; the steam conveyance is the 
worst possible for the transmission of parcels. Oh ! 
here is Honoria, as usual full of resources ; she says 
the imperials of a carriage which is coming out here 
for her and Lord Hamilton may be filled with them, 
and any thing you may wish to send. Said car- 
riage is to be found at Adams and Hooper's, Hay- 
market, who will be able to notify the last hour of 
its departure. 2 



1 His nephew, the late Rev. John Frere, rector of (Totten- 
ham and chaplain to Dr. Blomheld, when Bishop of London. 
He died in 1851, just as he was fulfilling the early promise he 
had given of a useful as well as brilliant career. 

2 The following " Apology for the Translation of Aristo- 
phanes " seems to have been written with a view to its being 
prefixed to these copies ; a different preface was subsequently 
added {vide supra, pp. 226 and 231). "The appearance of 
a publication so little suited to the period of age at which the 
writer has arrived, seems to require explanation on his part. 
The fact is, a strong persuasion had, from a very early time, 
been impressed upon his mind, that the English language was 
possessed of capabilities [for such a purpose] which had never 
hitherto been systematically studied, or sufficiently developed. 



298 MEMOIR OF 

" Did I write to you some time ago about a 
Dr. Mill, 1 a very learned orientalist, who passed 
through here many months ago, on his return from 
India ? he seemed much interested in my views for 
establishing the study of Hebrew, and its cognate 
dialects, which (as the Maltese is one) the natives 
have a peculiar facility for acquiring. He took 
charge of a commission for procuring books for the 
scholars, and, now that their long vacation is over, 
the poor young men are looking to me for the ful- 
filment of my promise. In the meantime I have 
heard nothing from Dr. Mill, and do not know 
where to write to him. 

" Speak you of young Master ? Well, my 

dear brother, I shall be willing to go you halves. 

Mrs. G applied to me for her rent, and I sent 

her ;£i2. She says that she could get a better 
house for ^"ioo; and I would do it for her, but I 
fear, when people have once got to depend upon 
the power and efficacy of (what is called) ' making 
a poor month,' they never thrive. 

" I wish some one branch of our families were 
settled in one of the colonies, where industry and 



To attempt such a task was beyond his powers ; indeed, 
without a knowledge of music, (which he never possessed, and 
for which he felt no talent or inclination,) it would have been 
impossible ; but the persuasion above mentioned gave rise to 
a habit of endeavouring to express in English any passage 
which had struck him as remarkable in any foreign or ancient 
language. It happened, owing to circumstances in which the 
public can have no interest, that some passages longer than 
usual were translated from Aristophanes ; but the possibility 
of producing an adequate translation of an entire play never 
would have entered into his mind but from the example of his 
friend Mr. W. Hamilton, who had himself completed a trans- 
lation of almost the whole of Aristophanes." 

1 Formerly Principal of Bishop's College, Calcutta, and 
subsequently Regius Professor of Hebrew at Cambridge, and 
Canon of Ely. 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 299 

regularity can hardly fail to succeed. If the 



like to go, and you think them capable of it, their 
outfit would not require me to sell a farm in order 
to make them landed proprietors in the Anti- 
podes." 

" November 28///, 1839. 

" I thank you for Mr. Maurice's book, and will be 
obliged to you to let me keep it, and procure 
another for John. I spent all the morning yester- 
day upon it, which has obliged me to abridge my 
correspondence this packet. . . 

" We have here a Mr. B , a friend and adherent 

of the Oxonian divines. I shall lend him Maurice. 

" Can you send the three numbers of ' Primi- 
tive Christianity ? ' It was to have been published 
the 28th of August." 

"Dec. 2nd, 1839. 

" I send you per favour of Captain Moresby of 
the ' Pembroke ' and under the particular care of 
Mr. Ewart, a midshipman of the same ship, a grand- 
son of Mr. Ewart of eminent diplomatic memory, 
and (though very different from him in principles) 
a nephew or cousin, I forget which, of the Radical 

paper-money Mr. , I send, I say, 27 copies 

of the ' Birds,' to be distributed according to their 
several directions — likewise some copies of the three 
Plays, bound together, which are also directed. 

" There is one to General Hutchinson, of whom 
I have lost sight so long, that I really do not know 
whether he is still alive, but if he is, it would be 
unpardonable in me, not to send him a copy — for 
the promise is 20 years old and more. I shall put it 
into a cover, with a note, which if it should fall into 
the hands of any other General Hutchinson, will 
serve at least to explain the mistake. 

* * HE * * 

" Mr. Ewart is also charged with a bottle of Ilex 
acorns, and two Cones of a Cedar of Lebanon in- 



300 MEMOIR OF 

tended for Roydon. He will also endeavour to 
smuggle ashore the Lamp which my poor sister had 
made, as a present for her nephew at Finningham, 
and will take a model of the monument which 
Temple was desirous of having. 

***** 

" Mr. Hay and Sir A. Barnard have passed 
through here on their return from Egypt, and 
Petra and Syria, having seen every thing that was 
to be seen, except Palmyra. 

" I envy them their spirits and juvenility : they 
have, however, been very bountiful, and I am in- 
debted to Mr. Hay for the Cones of Cedar above 
mentioned." 

His brother had no difficulty in finding Dr. Mill, 
and a list of the books which he recommended for 
the use of the Maltese Hebrew scholars was made 
and sent out. But, on looking over the list with 
Father Marmora, an unexpected difficulty presented 
itself, as described in the following letter to his 
brother : — 

" Malta, January 9, 1840. 

" I am much obliged to you for the trouble you 
have already taken, but at the same time sorry to 
tell you that your trouble is not entirely over, at 
least if the books are not already sent ; in which 
case, you may be able, either by yourself or by Dr. 
Mill, to save me the sum of £22 iys., being the 
amount of those books upon the list, which Mr. 
Marmora considers as useless. I enclose the list, 
with observations to which I do not think it neces- 
sary to add anything ; the fact is, that the students 
are all of the clergy, actual or intended, and among 
the clergy a knowledge of English is a most rare 
acquirement. 

" My chief inducement for urging the establish- 
ment of lectures on Hebrew in this university arose 
from the consideration that the natives possessed a 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 301 

grammar in' their own language, which, with some 
insignificant variations, is applicable to Hebrew : to 
teach it through the medium of English would be 
ignotum per ignotius. I hope, therefore, that I may- 
be spared the mortification of receiving so large a 
lot of books, which I should not be able to apply- 
to any useful purpose, not to mention the ^"22 lys. 
before alluded to, which, I am thinking, at this time 
of the year, would be a very acceptable present to 

poor Madam , and as an act of charity will 

be a stimulus to your exertions, you may think 
yourself at liberty so to apply it. 

" Dr. Mill will probably have greater authority 
over his bookseller ; and if you should find it ne- 
cessary, you may send this to him, with the accom- 
panying list. The difficulty of intercourse betwixt 
this place and England, except for letters, is such 
that I flatter myself the package may still have 
been detained. 

" I have not been able to find a conveyance for 
any additional copies of Aristophanes. Pray, when 
the 'Frogs' are finished, send a copy, with my best 
respects, to Dr. Mill." 1 



1 The following memorandum seems to have been drawn 
up by Mr. Frere, and submitted to the Council of the Univer- 
sity at Malta, embodying his views on the subject of teaching 
Hebrew as a branch of higher education. The remarks on 
the office and powers of such an University, on the affinities 
of Maltese, and the value of grammar taught through a cog- 
nate language, will justify the insertion of the paper. It 
shows, moreover, how little the lapse of years had diminished 
the interest he felt in his favourite studies : — 

" Reflections on the Studies which may be cultivated in the 
University of Malta, respectfully sjibmitted to the consider- 
ation of the Members of the Council. 
"There are two points of view under which an University 
may be considered. First, as a place of education for the 
superior classes of the rising generation instituted and 
organized for the purpose of qualifying them for the due per- 



302 MEMOIR OF 

" January i()th, 1840. 
" I have only just received your letter, and have 
only a moment to answer it, so I must crowd as 
many thanks as I can into a small compass. I am 
really mortified to think of the amount of trouble 
you have had. 



formance of their civil and professional duties. The utility 
and necessity of an institution for these purposes is too 
obvious to require to be supported or confirmed by an unne- 
cessary length of argument. 

" But the Universities of Europe from their first institution 
have supported another and a higher character ; and if they 
had not, the mere process of education according to the 
degree of knowledge and acquirements possessed at the time 
of their establishment, continued to the present time, would 
have left mankind in a state very little advanced from what it 
was four hundred years ago. 

" The Universities, as I said before, had a higher character, 
like separate states combined in political union ; they were, 
it may be said, federal members of the Great Republic of 
Letters, engaged in a mutual commerce of science and litera- 
ture : the whole present stock of our literary wealth may be 
said to have been accumulated by this commerce, exclusive at 
least of that portion of it, which has been contributed during 
the t last century, by voluntary associations of learned and 
scientific persons. 

" This duty of contributing their efforts towards the general 
advancement of knowledge, constitutes the peculiar dignity of 
an University ; and unless it is in some degree maintained, 
we may rest assured that the subordinate but obviously useful 
objects will never be accomplished in a satisfactory manner. 

" It is an universal truth, that subordinate advantages arise 
from the pursuit of those which are of a more general and 
elevated character ; and that if the subordinate are pursued, 
separately, exclusively, and solely for their own sake, we shall 
generally be baffled in our attempt to secure them. 

" If, for instance, the establishment of Religion is attended 
to solely with a view to its civil influence in the maintenance 
of social subordination, religion will be degraded, its degra- 
dation will bring on hypocrisy with its attendant infidelity, 
and ultimately anarchy, the very evil against which it was 
considered as the best security. If the fine arts are cultivated 
solely with a view to the profit to be derived from improved 
taste in the patterns of our manufactures, we may be assured 
(as Sir J. Reynolds justly observes, upon this very subject, 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 303 

" Do not suppose that I forget that I owe you 
£%o, though I do not remind you of it like Falstafif. 
I hope you will find me a better paymaster than 
that worthy knight. 

" The ' Rodney ' which sailed on the 14th, con- 



in his lectures to the artists of the Academy), that they will 
never accomplish even this subordinate and paltry purpose. 

"Thus in everything, if a noble and superior object is 
pursued for its own sake with zeal and generosity, all the 
inferior advantages which are connected with it, will follow 
naturally and of their own accord. 

" Let us apply this principle to the conduct of an University, 
and particularly of an University situated as that of Malta is. 
If we suppose an University incapable of producing anything 
which can be generally interesting to the learned world, which 
should be unable to quote the name of a professor whose 
reputation had extended beyond the limits of his native 
country, such an University (whatever diligence it might 
apply to the just execution of its ordinary duties in assisting 
and directing the studies of the pupils) would labour under 
great disadvantages — First, from the want of that authority 
and reputation on the part of its seniors, which can only be 
confirmed in its highest degree, by the testimony of foreign 
literati, and the applause of other countries ; and, again, 
because the younger students, seeing their horizon bounded 
by a narrow circuit, and having no examples immediately 
before their eyes, of scholars who by their own merits and 
exertions had extended their reputation to a wider sphere, 
would confine their efforts to the attainment of a local supe- 
riority, considering their own countrymen as their only com- 
petitors, and that degree of excellence which would be suffi- 
cient to surpass them, as the just limit of their own exertions. 
But, it may be asked, what hopes are there for an University, 
situated as that of Malta is (locally insulated, and with the 
poorest endowment possible) to produce anything which can 
be considered as a contribution to the general mass of 
science and knowledge ? In regard to those pursuits which 
are followed with the eagerness of fashion in other parts of 
Europe, the want of communication, and the difficulty of 
intercourse, would perpetually throw us in the background. 
A professor at Malta might waste a year in the solution of a 
difficulty, which had been already solved at Paris or London, 
and the same discoveries, even when published and printed, 
might in many instances escape his notice. Not to mention 
that for those pursuits which require an expensive apparatus, 



304 MEMOIR OF 

veys a bureau of which some of the drawers con- 
tain copies of the three plays, and several of the 
' Birds,' for those to whom the two first plays were 
sent before. 

" This is another trouble which our consanguinity 
imposes upon you. ..." 



astronomy, for instance, or chemistry, the establishment of an 
observatory or of a scientific laboratory would be wholly out 
of the question. 

" Under these circumstances it is consolatory to reflect that 
we possess within ourselves the materials for a branch of 
literary industry, which, if properly employed, would enable 
us to enter with advantage into the general commerce of 
literature : the example of the University of Corfu, and the 
expectation of new improvements and discoveries likely to 
arise in the study of Greek literature, when cultivated by 
those to whom a dialect of the same language is familiar from 
their infancy, may suggest to us the adoption of a similar 
course, and it would not be presumptuous to anticipate that 
an equally favourable expectation would be excited, of new 
illustrations likely to arise in the cultivation of a very exten- 
sive branch of Oriental literature, if zealously pursued and 
candidly encouraged in the University of Malta. 

" The native language of Malta is an Oriental dialect, inti- 
mately connected with Arabic, Hebrew, and Syriac ; with 
respect to the first the fact is notorious, that a Maltese finds 
no difficulty in making himself understood anywhere in the 
Mediterranean coasts of Africa and Asia, a circumstance 
which is of no small convenience in commercial intercourse, 
and which might be improved to great advantage in that 
respect. In Casal Zeitun the boys actually learn to write 
their own language in the Arabic character, and as the 
language itself is intelligible in all the countries before 
mentioned, it is obvious that the inhabitants of that place 
would possess great advantages, if a change of circumstances 
reanimating commerce and directing it to Africa and the 
Levant, should enable them to develop again the commercial 
industry which they exhibited, not long ago, on the northern 
and western coasts of the Mediterranean. But perhaps it 
may be said that this is foreign to the proper pursuits of an 
University, and particularly to those higher ones on which I 
have chiefly insisted. It may be so ; but it is an acquirement 
very easily attained, which may possibly be of real utility to 



JOHN HO OK HAM FRERE. 305 

" January 29th, 1840. 
" I could not write by the last packet, but there 
is an intimation of something likely to go to Mar- 
seilles, and Honoria is going into town for ' por 
aveniguar' as we used to say, and though I have 



many who receive their education in the University, and it 
would be discreditable if its scholars were deficient in an 
accomplishment possessed by the sons of the poorest peasants 
in another part of the island. Besides, with respect to the 
attainment of proficiency in a branch of literature for which 
we have such peculiar advantages (which is so extensive and 
interesting in itself, and which to all other Europeans pre- 
sents such uncommon difficulties) as the Arabic, it would be 
no slight step to be able to read and write with ease in a cog- 
nate dialect, and this step is one which is now actually acquired 
by boys of seven or eight years old in a few weeks. 

" The direct practical utility of being able to write and read 
their own language in the Arabic character, is evidently the 
object proposed in the method adopted at Zeitun, where the 
boys learn at once their own grammar and the Italian, declin- 
ing and conjugating in both languages together, with great 
facility, at a very early age. 

" I should apprehend that any person, himself a native of 
Malta, and possessing a knowledge of the literal and classical 
Arabic, would (if desirous of instructing a countryman of his 
own in the same studies) begin the course of instruction by 
the process which I have already described, and of which we 
have an actual example before us — we see then that the same 
method which is usefully employed for subordinate purposes, 
may be made an elementary foundation for higher literary 
attainments : to understand the grammar of his own language 
in conjunction with Italian, and to be able to read and write 
it with facility in the Arabic character, may be the means of 
profit and advancement to the poorest native of the island if 
possessed of industry and talents, his own language and the 
Italian enable him to traffic in the whole of the Mediter- 
ranean ; and if he is able to read and write in both languages 
the advantage which he has in this respect will be greatly in- 
creased. But if fortune or profession should destine a youth 
to higher and literary pursuits, the same elementary rudi- 
ments which would be practically useful to the mercantile 
adventurer, will afford to the Maltese scholar an advantage 
which would enable him to outstrip the competition of any- 
other European scholar in a branch of study highly interesting 

X 



306 MEMOIR OF 

little to say, except to thank you for the trouble you 
have taken in all your journeys to the bookseller and 
the bookbinders — I must not omit what is so much 
your due — fervently hoping at the same time that 



in itself, and which has been hitherto little explored by Euro- 
pean literati. 

" The same observations (at least as far as the scholar is 
concerned) will apply to the study of Hebrew. I conceive 
that a Maltese master with a Maltese pupil would find great 
advantage in beginning with a short preliminary course, in 
which he would point out to him the grammatical rules 
existing in his own language, and which he had been in the 
practice of following from habit and imitation, without being 
aware of their principles or nature. 

" These rules are totally different from those which exist in 
any of the modern European languages, or in Greek or 
Latin, but they have a direct analogy with, and are in many 
instances identical, with the rules of the Hebrew language. 

"And here an observation occurs which ought not to be 
omitted. To speak one's own language without a knowledge 
of its grammar and construction, is the true characteristic of 
ignorance in an individual, or of barbarism in a people. A 
native of any other country in Europe, by acquiring any 
other of the languages which are usually learnt, acquires at 
the same time the grammar of his own. Thus an English- 
man learning French, or an Italian learning Latin, cannot 
fail to observe that the rules which guide him in the acquisi- 
tion of the new language, are equally applicable to his own ; 
and it is a common observation that those persons who have 
learnt another language are usually the most correct and 
perfect in speaking their own. This is the result of the 
analogy subsisting between them, but where this analogy 
does not exist — as for instance between the Maltese language 
and any one of those which are usually acquired by the in- 
habitants of the island (as English, for instance, Italian, or 
Latin), it is possible, and I believe not unfrequent, for a 
native to acquire another language, without deriving from it 
any very correct notion of the nature and construction of his 
own. If, therefore, it is desirable that a man should speak 
his own language correctly, and not merely as a parrot, or a 
barbarian, an attainment which is so easily acquired, and 
which may be made by boys of seven years old, ought not to 
be omitted in the course of Maltese education. 

" It has been shown already that the Maltese language may 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 307 

the rogues' laziness may have been proof against 
your remonstrances, and that my last letter may 
have arrived in time to save me the mortification 
of receiving' what would be altogether useless. 1 



be usefully employed if written in the Arabic character, and 
that this is an acquirement within the reach of mere children, 
who ought not to be left in ignorance of the grammar of the 
language which they habitually speak. I should, therefore, 
venture with submission to propose that the grammar of the 
Maltese language combined with the Italian, and the practice 
of writing it in the Arabic and perhaps also in the common 
alphabet, should be introduced in the lower school, and 
taught at the same time with the rudiments of Latin to boys 
of ten years old and under. Those who are obliged to dis- 
continue these studies, will in this way have acquired an 
accomplishment which may be of profit and advantage to 
them in foreign commerce, and facilitate their intercourse 
with those countries to which our trade in future seems most 
likely to be directed. Those who continue to pursue their 
studies, will possess an advantage peculiar to themselves, in 
entering upon a vast field of literature hitherto very im- 
perfectly explored in those languages which are cognate 
dialects of the Native Maltese, the Hebrew, Arabic, Syriac, 
and Ethiopic. In all of these the University of Malta might 
obtain a decided pre-eminence over the other Universities and 
learned bodies in Europe — and pre-eminence in one species 
of knowledge would (as has been before observed) be attended 
with advantages in others. It would be contrary to experience 
to suppose that an University pre-eminent in one point would 
at the same time be deficient in others. 

" These are the reflections which I venture to submit, thus 
hastily, to the judgment of those who are fully capable of 
estimating them (if they should be deemed worthy of any 
consideration), and who possess a practical and local know- 
ledge of the means by which such a plan might be effectually 
realized. 

" It would be too presumptuous in me to venture in this 
stage to enter into a detail of arrangements ; it would, more- 
over, be premature, unless the principles and views, which 
have been generally stated, should be sanctioned by the pre- 
vious approbation of the Council." 



Owing to mistakes in the transcribing. 



308 MEMOIR OF 

" The books which you mention as likely to come 
with the carriage, viz. ' Holdius Schrceder,' &c. and 
three others, will be very acceptable in the mean- 
while. 

"But after so much trouble as you have had 
already, as appears by your last, I really feel some 
compunction at the thought of the additional trou- 
ble which you are likely to have in discarding what 
is useless." 

11 February 6th, 1840. 

" You will be glad to hear that I have seen our 

old friend Colonel C here, in the Lazaretto, 

very well and cheerful, and the same warm-hearted 
worthy fellow that we recollect him. 

" We must both of us I apprehend have appeared 
to each other somewhat older than we were 30 years 
ago. 

" The packet from England is just come in and 
ours to England is just starting. 

" We are all well, i. e. Lord H. is (though very 
slowly) recovering. Lady H. and myself as well 
as usual." 

"March $th, 1840. 

" I had entirely forgot that it was packet day, 
which will occasion brevity, as it is now very near 
the packet hour. I have packed up and directed 
a number of Aristophanes, which Captain Barker, 
who sails for England in a few days, will have the 
kindness to take charge of. 

" I am afraid that you will think that you have 
imposed a troublesome task upon yourself in under- 
taking to distribute them. I wish you may feel 
impatient and pack them off speedily. . . . Here 
comes Honoria to tell me that I shall be too late, 
and if she had not come before I should not have 
known that it was post day." 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 309 

"April 2nd, 1840. 

" You will be glad to hear that the ' Prince 
George ' is safe arrived, and though she is not yet 
unpacked nor the soldiers disembarked, we trust 
that the carriage, and its contents, will be found to 
have arrived safely also. 

" We are now looking out for the ' Boadicea.' 
I have had bad luck in maritime affairs — a cask of 
special ale, brewed at Roydon, and sent by the 
' Fanny,' has not been heard of — they met with 
bad weather, and were forced to throw every thing 
overboard — fine English furniture, Forti - pianos, 
&c. &c. were consigned to the care of the Nereids, 
and with them I presume my cask of ale, as a pro- 
pitiatory libation. 

" We have been disappointed by the non-arrival 

of Mr. and Mrs. . We suspect they must have 

trusted themselves to the Rhone steamer, which 
had not arrived when the one from Marseilles started 
for this place. 

" It is very provoking, I had provided a superb 
nuptial bed, large enough for a polygamist, and all 
to no purpose. 

" I have no time for more nonsense. " 

"May i^th, 1840. 

" I have so many letters to write, that I can only 
afford a few lines to each of them, and those few 
must be only to give you additional trouble. 

" Would you then have the goodness to send 
copies (complete ones) with my compliments (re- 
spectful ones) to Lord Wellesley, Lord Burghersh 
and Dr. Crotch the musician, also the three Plays 
to Mr. Hammond, he has had the ' Frogs ' sent him 
already by Messieurs Allen, his brothers-in-law, 
who passed through here a day or two ago. 

" I send some lines, which if you think it ad- 
visable may be forwarded to Temple. The post is 



310 MEMOIR OF 

going or I would send them to him myself, in my 
own hand." 

To his brother George, Mr. Frere wrote by the 
same mail : — 

"First let me thank you for Lord Wellesley's 
verses. I have desired Bartle to send him in return 
my plays, and also to Lord Burgh ersh ; perhaps he 
may set some of the choruses to music. A propos 
to this I have also desired him to send one to Dr. 
Crotch." 

The following are extracts from numerous other 
letters which he wrote to his brother Bartle during 
the remainder of this year : — 

"June 25//Z, 1840. 

" We are going for a trip on board a ship ; it is 
the ' Tyne,' Captain Townsend, bound for Corfu, 
and from thence where the Admiral pleases ; so 
that I must say, as the sailor said — ' Look into 
Steele's List,' and you will always be able to tell 
where we are. 

" I shall write again when I know what direction 
we are likely to take. 

" This summer threatens to be so excessively 
hot, that we are glad to escape to the air of the 
sea.. 

" Captain Townsend is a very old acquaintance 
of ours ; he expects us on board at twelve o'clock. 

" Mr. Bouchier will take care of our letters, and 
of this which I am now writing among the rest." 

[The subjoined, in a letter dated July 19th, 1840, 
refers to his anxiety to prevent the publication of a 
book that was, in his opinion, likely to be harmful.] 

" Talking of , I must tell you a thing which 

I have never liked to talk about ; in prosecuting 
his researches .... he has fallen upon some 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 311 

strange and shocking discoveries, my sister and 
myself urged him to suppress them, but his friend 

Mr. L encouraged him, in fine, the work is 

printed, and now he is frightened, and Mr. L 

also to a certain degree, but not so much so as not 

to retain fifty copies for himself. is willing to 

sacrifice his time and labour if I will pay my share 
of the printers' bill ; this I have done, as you will 
see by his letter which I enclose, and will thank 
yon to return. 

" You will see also by this the heap of dangerous 
matter which is lying in deposit at my disposition ; 
he had offered to send them here, where I might 
destroy them as I pleased, I wrote to say that I 
would trust them in his keeping, and this is his let- 
ter acknowledging and thanking me for my con- 
fidence. I do not, however, feel perfectly secure ; 
the event of his death or an execution in his house 
might spring the mine. 

" I should wish you therefore to call upon him 
and to form your own judgment. I should have 
no objection to his retaining a number of copies, 
say forty or fifty, trusting to his discretion for their 
distribution out of England ; the rest I should wish 
to have secured against any such contingency by their 
immediate destruction. If you can contrive this with 
the assistance of the next baker, you will set my 
mind at rest ; or they may, at any rate, be sent 
here, as a supply for my own oven. Do not think 
me foolish or extravagant in all this. I do not 
know in what way I could employ the means 
attached to me more usefully to religion and 
society." 

"Zante, August 1st, 1840. 1 

" You will be glad to hear that we are alive and 
well at this distance of time and place. 

1 In this year Mr. Frere visited the Ionian Islands, 
Trieste, and Rome in company with Lord and Lady 
Hamilton Chichester. 



312 MEMOIR OF 

" Besides I have to thank you for the trouble 

you have had with . Among other reasons 

for not prefixing a title-page * there is this, that the 
copies which are distributed as presents would be 
less perfect than those which remain for sale. I 
forget whether I desired you to send a copy to 
a Mr. Jeremie, of Trinity College ? It was a 
request of our nephew Bartle, whose tutor he 
had been at the East India College, and who 
had somehow got a copy of the forty first 
pages of the ' Frogs,' which he taught his pupil to 
understand and admire. Perhaps the copy had 
better be sent to the care of Mr. Philip Frere of 
Downing, who will know where to find him. 

" I have been much distressed at hearing a very 
unfavourable account of the health of our old friend 
W. Rose ; let me know if the account is less bad 
than that which I heard, and which represented the 
case as a very desperate one. 

" I have just lost a very sincere friend and well- 
wisher, Mr. Nugent, whom I had known for thirty- 
six years. Poor Manning too, whom I had not 
seen since I left college, but who is really a public 
loss, considering the mass of knowledge which has 
perished with him. 

" This, the only letter which I write by this occa- 
sion, will serve to notify my existence to inquiring 
friends." 

"VENICE, September 15///, 1S40. 

" I have taken an estesissimo foglio di carta sim- 
ply for the sake of announcing our arrival at this 
place, depicted in the prefixed vignette : if you 
retain a recollection of the prints in the old show 

1 In a previous letter to Mr. Bartle Frere. dated Malta, 
June 31st, 1S40, he said, in speaking of the same subject, "It 
would be too ridiculous in me. now for the first time in my life 
to clap my name on a title-page ; and I cannot think it can 
be necessary for the sale of so limited an edition." 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 313 

box at Bedington you will conjecture that we are at 
Venice ; and you will be right so far, but you will 
still be at a loss to guess what inn we are at, there- 
fore I have thought right to mark it, with a bird 
flying over it, ad hunc modum (as the Greek gram- 
mar says). 

" We came here from Trieste with Sir Andrew 
Barnard, and here met with Mr. Hay, but they 
have both left us, one for Greece, the other (Sir 
Andrew) for England. They are the most active 
young fellows in the world. We very narrowly 
missed seeing Sir R. Inglis, he being at Ancona ; 
but we have found a most obliging cicerone, an 
English gentleman, who has lived here these eight 
years, and who is very deep in the Venetian anti- 
quities and records, some of which he is printing. 

" They are printing the reports of the Venetian 
Ambassadors ; you know that on their return from 
a mission they made a general report, the first of 
them goes back as far as the time of Henry VII. 

" But I suppose they are in England by this time. 

" This place is recovering its commercial activity, 
and I see no appearance of poverty or discontent. 
Trieste, in the meanwhile, is advancing at a rate 
which must astonish I think even the Americans, 
whom I saw there in the three-decker, commanded 
by an old acquaintance of mine, whom I had been 
civil to at Malta. Some of the officers came over 
here, and lodged in this hotel, ' Fiera gente, terri- 
bile, non parlano lingua.' 

" I find that ■ is going to be married, 

and that you give ^500 to that effect, and I mean 
to follow your excellent example with an equal 
sum." 

"September 15///, 1840. 

" Pray advance the money for 's 

bookseller, for I have not time to write a separate 
letter to Hoare. 



314 MEMOIR OF 

" I have a letter from Mr. L , which, if I had 

time to look it out, and you were not such an enemy 
to postage, I would enclose. I think I can trust 
him ; he writes as a very serious and sensible gentle- 
man, deprecating above all things the circulation 
of the work in England, but thinking that it can do 
no harm abroad, where so much worse are circu- 
lated." 

" Malta, September 2,0th, 1840. 

" Many thanks for your kind and considerate 
letter of the 20th of this month. I was much 
relieved at the same time by receiving a letter 
from Temple, written in a very firm and manly 
spirit. 1 I trust he may be able to support and con- 
sole his poor wife. 

" My first impression of course was for the loss of 
such a young man ; but when I told Honoria, she 
threw up her arms, with the tears in her eyes — ' Oh ! 
poor Mrs. Frere ; ' and this certainly ought to be 
our only thought at present. 

"Do you think that a total change of scene 
would be useful, or a thing which one could venture 
to propose ? a visit for instance to this place ? Pray 
let me know ; or, if you think it advisable, suggest 
it yourself. 

" I have sent Messrs. Hoare an order to pay you 
^65, which, as I conceive, will put you in cash to 
the amount of £J or thereabouts. 

" Mr. Pickering, of Chancery Lane, has already 
received one hundred and sixty copies, to be sold as 

profit of Mr. and Mrs. G . I have heard nothing 

from him, but can have no doubt of their having 
reached him. 

" Well then — will you call there and purchase a 
couple of copies of him, and send them with my 

1 On the death of his eldest son. 



JOHN HOOKHAM FEE RE. 315 

compliments, and a copy of the ' Frogs,' to Lord 
Aberdeen and Mr. Thomas Grenvillc, both of whom 
I have unaccountably forgotten. At this rate you 
will see that I am not likely to enrich myself by 
literature. 

" Inquire too whether he has done anything to 
secure the copyright by entry at Stationers'-hall, or 
sending copies to the Museum and Bodleian, &c. 

"Honoria tells me that it is time to close my 
letters, which saves you for the present from 
another commission." 

While at Rome, in January, 1841, Mr. Frere had 
an attack of apoplexy, with a threatening of para- 
lysis. The following letter is undated, but appears 
to have been written while he was still confined to 
his room. It shows that the attack, though very 
alarming at the time, had not in any way affected 
his mental powers : * — 

" My dear Bartle, 

" I think it is better that you should 
have an account immediately from myself, as pro- 
bably from among the many English here, some 
incorrect ones may reach England — vague and ex- 
aggerated, which it may be better to rectify. The 
case is this. On Saturday last (it is now Tuesday) 
I perceived a weakness and want of command in 
the fingers of my left hand, and upon rising I per- 
ceived that my gait and footing was very much 
like that of a drunken man. I accordingly lost no 
time in sending for doctors, and in a short time had 



1 Lord Brougham, speaking of him to the Rev. Constantine 
Frere (Mr. Frere's nephew), in 1853, said that when he met 
Mr. Frere in Rome in 1841, in answer to his greeting Mr. 
Frere replied, "Oh, very well, thank you ; I've had an attack 
of apoplexy and a touch of paralysis, but I'm very well." — "So 
like Frere," said Lord Brougham. 



316 MEMOIR OF 

two of them (English) at my elbow ; they unani- 
mously bled and blistered, and purged, and put me 
to bed, where, for the present, they have advised 
me to remain, and avoid all exertion or excitation. 
I cannot guess what their real opinions are, but 
they talk confidently and cheerfully to others. 

" Mr. Hay is a joint inmate of this hotel, and is a 
great comfort. 

" I have not been able to see Mr. D . He 

called at this hotel and left a letter, but no card of 
his address. I now hear that he has gone to 
Naples ; but as the letter which he brought from 
you was intended to be delivered at Malta, I con- 
clude that he will proceed there, and that we shall 
meet. I shall be happy to show him any civilities 
in my power, an attention due, I think, to a person 
who, as I see, calls you uncle. 

" My doctors forbid my reading, 1 and, a fortiori, 
would forbid my writing ; so I conclude, dear 
Bartle, 

" Affectionately yours, 

" J. H. FRERE." 

To his brother George, after his return to Malta, 
he wrote : — 

"April 2%th, 1841. 

" I had begun a note something like this by the 
last packet, the purport of which was to thank you 
for your kind annual present, which I found here 
on my return, together with numbers 5 and 6 of 
the work on ' Ancient Christianity.' It is a great 
pity that the subject should have been stirred, but 
I think it is treated temperately enough, and above 



1 In answer to the remark that Mr. Frere's love of reading 
had become so exaggerated in his latter days that he read 
almost constantly, Lord Brougham said, "Ah, but he was 
always an helluo librorum." 



JOHN HOOKHAM FEE RE. 317 

all, with great decency. I do not see any such great 
advantage in the revival of the study of the old 
ecclesiastical writers. They seem to me like the 
furniture in the shop of Romeo's apothecary, very 
curious, but not fit to be prescribed as remedies. 
I have not any duplicates here, but I think there is 
at Roydon a copy of the ' Scriptores Ecclesiastici ' 
in three volumes folio, which Temple would send 
to you or to the Rector of Cottenham. I have also 
to thank you for poor Lord Dudley's letters. I 
have not yet told you that our nephew William, 
with his wife and two children, have been with us 
since their release from quarantine, about ten days 
ago. I flatter myself that all her new relations will 
be as much pleased with her as I have been. 
" Read Ranke's ' History of the latter Popes.' " 

His nephew William, whose return from India is 
mentioned in this letter, availed himself of the op- 
portunities which his stay with Mr. Frere afforded, 
to induce him to put the finishing strokes to his 
translation of " Theognis," and to take it to the 
printers. Of this translation Mr. Norton, his Ame- 
rican critic, observes : — " His ' Theognis Restitutus ' 
affords another instance of his success in conveying 
'* to the English reader a complete notion of the 
intention of the original, and a clear impression of 
the temper, character, and style which it exhibits.' 
His object was not to give a literal and verbally 
exact rendering, which might often puzzle the 
modern reader, but to translate in such a manner 
as to present clearly the essential meaning of the 
poet. ' It might not be difficult,' he says, ' to crowd 
into a given number of lines or words an exact 
verbal interpretation, but this verbal interpretation 
would convey almost in every instance either an 
imperfect meaning or a false character ; the relative 
and collateral ideas, and the associations which 



318 MEMOIR OF 

served as stepping-stones to transitions apparently- 
incongruous and abrupt, would still be wanting ; 
and the author whose elliptical familiar phraseology- 
was a mere transcript of the language of daily life, 
would have the appearance of a pedantic composer 
studiously obscure and enigmatic' Such versions 
as Mr. Frere's become a component part of the 
literature of the language in which they are made. 
They do not exclude the literal and precise trans- 
lations which are intended to exhibit, not merely 
the permanent and universal elements of the ori- 
ginal, but also its local and personal peculiarities, 
and the exact forms of its expression. These, too, 
are required, and have their value. Only the man 
of genius can venture to adopt such a method as 
Mr. Frere's, and how few translators are men of 
genius ! 

" From the confused mass of fragments which 
form the existing remains of ' Theognis ' — some 
fourteen hundred lines in all — Mr. Frere endea- 
voured to reconstruct a biography of the poet, 
about whose life very little is absolutely known, 
and to indicate the successive changes of circum- 
stance and situation under which his verses were 
composed. The ingenuity and learning displayed 
in it, the acuteness of interpretation, and the interest 
of the mode in which the subject is developed and 
illustrated, give to this little book a great charm as 
a work of delicate and thorough scholarship, and 
of imaginative reconstruction. How far the author 
is correct in his inferences and conclusions must be 
left to the determination of critics not less learned 
than himself." x 

A very favourable notice of this translation ap- 
peared in the "Quarterly Review" in 1843, 2 of 



"North American Review" for July, 1868, p. 165. 
No. 144, P- 452. 



JOHN II 00 KH AM FRERE. 319 

which Sir Cornewall Lewis said, in the " Classical 
Museum" for October, 1843 (No. II.):-"We had 
intended to append to this article" (on Aristophanes) 
" some specimens of Mr. Frere's translation of parts 
of ' Theognis ; ' but the very complete account 
of this work given in the last number of the 
1 Quarterly Review ' has rendered this a super- 
fluous task. We will only express our admiration 
of the facility with which Mr. Frere has passed from 
the wild, grotesque and ever-varying language and 
metres of Aristophanes to the sedate admonitions 
and reflections of the gnomic poet, and the fidelity 
with which he has represented both sorts of diction 
in English always pure, terse, and idiomatic." 

Both critics thought he had built upon the frag- 
ments of " Theognis " a superstructure of supposed 
facts which the foundation of materials was hardly 
wide enough to support ; and Sir Cornewall Lewis 
held that sometimes, by combining separate frag- 
ments, a meaning had been obtained for which no 
evidence beyond conjecture could be produced. 
But he added, " These objections to his arrange- 
ment, however, rarely affect the success of the 
translations." 

To his brother George, Mr. Frere wrote : — 

"August 18///, 1 84 1. 
" There is no chance, I fear, of my acquitting my 
debt to you as a correspondent otherwise than by 
beginning when a mail is not going, having always 
at those times letters which absolutely require to 
be answered, and the very posture and act of writing 
being somewhat fatiguing to me. Otherwise, if I 
had found it on my arrival here, your kind and 
considerate letter would have been acknowledged 
before ; but it so happened that it, with two or three 
others (amongst them one from Hatley on the same 
subject, that of my illness at Rome), had been 



320 MEMOIR OF 

huddled away separately, and were not discovered 
till some time after. 

" I thank you for explaining to me what I could 
not well explain to myself, namely, the nature of 
my dislike to these temperance societies." 

" Augtist 27 th. 

" I had, as you see, begun, but had not succeeded 
in finishing, ten days ago. 

" I agree with you perfectly as to what you say, 
that our only chance of safety consists in reforming 
and extending the church ; but we must be content 
to do it by great sacrifice, of self-denial of our own, 
not by votes of parliament with our new majority. 
Now it was said in old time that we should give ' the 
devil his due;' and without entering into the 
question of their respective merits (for there is 
another old saying, that ' comparisons are odious '), 
it cannot surely be contended that the Whigs are 
so much worse that in the present age, distinguished 
as it is by candour and liberality, the same equit- 
able consideration should not be extended to them. 
Therefore I laud them for two things — first, for 
having stopped the translation of bishops ; and 
secondly, for having established a commutation 
of tithes. A propos of these questions, I have con- 
tributed to the building of the church at Harlow. 
Has the question of endowment been thought of, 
or is it to be left entirely to the voluntary system f 
I have no objection to a. partial dependence on the 
good-will of the parishioners ; but, without some 
endowment, in fifty years our church may be turned 
into a malt-house. 

" I am tolerably well, and the day before yester- 
day read over ' Spiritual Despotism ' a second time. 
Have you read a 'Voice from America?' What 
are we about ? and how is it to end ? " 

The early agitation of questions, the discussions on 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 321 

which have since led to what is now known as Ritual- 
ism, had extended to Malta. With all his rever- 
ence for ancient uninterrupted usage, Mr. Frere had 
little sympathy with the revival of forms long ob- 
solete. Commenting on some innovations in music 
and vestments which had troubled an Anglican 
congregation in the see of Gibraltar, he said, in 
reply to the argument that the change was justified 
by the custom in Edward the Sixth's time, — " But 
if I were to appear at church in the costume of 
Queen Elizabeth's time, would the clergyman con- 
sider it a sufficient justification for my disturbing 
the gravity of the congregation that I could prove 
the dress to be in strict accordance with the 
usages and sumptuary laws of three hundred years 
back?" 

Still less sympathy had he with the custom of 
discussing the gravest questions of theology as sub- 
jects of merely ordinary table-talk. But he com- 
plained that he sometimes found it difficult to evade 
such discussion, or to turn the conversation. One 
very enthusiastic lady, who had repeatedly pressed 
him for his opinions on purgatory, declared, sitting 
next him at dinner, that she must know what he 
thought on the subject, — " I told her," he said, " that 
I really knew very little about it, except what I 
had learned from the church in the Floriana, which 
I pass on my way into Valetta. The church, you 
remember, is surrounded with groups of figures 
carved in stone, and rising out of stone flames, and 
I told her that, if the reality were at all like that, I 
was clearly of opinion that the flames were neces- 
sary for the decent clothing of the figures. — After 
that she managed to talk about something else." 

On September 18th, 1842, he wrote to his brother 
Bartle :— 

" I am afraid you have had a good deal of trouble 
about ' Theognis.' One part of it, viz. the table of 
errata, I shall be much obliged to you if you will 

Y 



322 MEMOIR OF 

undertake ; and, in addition, there are one or two 
gross errata, destructive of the metre and sense, 
which I would wish corrected by hand in any copies 
you may give away .... for the fact is that 
hardly anybody ever looks to a table of errata. 

" It is odd that I should since have found the 
initial lines of the poem to which Fragment C. P. 
103 belongs, and another fastens on to F. LXXXIV.; 
so that it should seem, after all, that I ought to 
have bestowed another year upon it, instead of 
Horace's nine ! 

" For the rest, you cannot do amiss in distributing 
them to any person whom you think capable of en- 
joying [them], and whom you may wish to oblige. 

" Pray send the four plays and ' Theognis ' to 
Mr. Lyell, junior. If Mr. Lyell, senior, has not the 
' Theognis,' it ought to be sent to him at ' Kinnordie, 
Kirriemuir, N.B.' I send the direction, lest you 
should be at a loss for it ; and, as I know you hate 
postage, I do not return it. 

" Pray send two copies to Lord Holland and to 
the Bishop of London, and any other bishops, Llan- 
daff, for instance, and Monk." 

" Malta, March 2yd, 1843. 

(After telling him of the dispatch of a box of ilex 
seed for distribution to several friends.) 

"I have also sent fourteen copies of 'Theognis,' 
in one of which I have marked and corrected the 
errata majora, such, I mean, as confuse the metre 
and the sense ; so that, if you have a mind to show 
a particular attention to any one of your friends, you 
may do it at the cost of the trouble of correcting 
the errata. There are, I think, some other points 
on which I had meant to write to you, but which I 
do not immediately recollect. One of them I have 

recollected. It is to know whether Mrs. has 

profited] by the sale of the Aristophanes, of which 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 323 

(/. e. of the three plays) 170 copies were sent to 
Pickering almost as soon as they were printed ? If 
it were not out of your way some morning - , I should 
be glad if you would make inquiry of him." 

" April yh, 1S43. 

" My dear George, 

" I am sorry that the few words in which 
I mentioned the affair should have given you the 

trouble of writing a long letter. D has so 

little regard to truth that I believe he has finally 
lost the perception of it, and really imagines him- 
self to have a case ; an imagination from which, I 
believe, he is not to be driven, even by the sentence 
of a court, but will continue to his life's end to 
believe and repeat the same stories which he has 
told hitherto. I really believe, as you say, that he 
is now got entirely out of your reach, and equally 
beyond the fear of exposure for dishonourable con- 
duct ; but to find that he has acted foolishly and 
unsuccessfully will, I conceive, be some mortification 
to him." 

"May isth, 1843. 

" The few lines which I have time to write will 
serve to thank you for your letter with the amusing 
tale of ' Miss Margaret Catchpole.' 1 I think she is 



1 " Margaret Catchpole," by the Rev. Richard Cobbold, of 
Wortham. The tale was founded on the history of a servant 
girl in Suffolk, who carried off a horse to enable her to rescue 
her lover. She was tried and convicted, and only saved from 
the death which was then the penalty of her offence by great 
interest made for her by her employers. She was one of the 
first female convicts transported to New South Wales, and 
having, by her worthy conduct there, obtained a pardon, she 
distinguished herself by the ability and energy with which she 
subsequently devoted herself to good works during a long and 
useful life. Her story, as told by Mr. Cobbold, is a very inter- 
esting one ; but it is to be regretted that the series of remark- 



324 MEMOIR OF 

an shonour to the county. So this comes of emi- 
gration — that they come in another generation and 
are able to bid for the estates of foolish Squires ; 
why should not you, who have a son already an 
emigrant at the Cape, enable him to purchase land 

there ? Poor writes to tell me that his doctor 

prescribes him wine, which he cannot afford to pur- 
chase ; it would be a great charity if you would 
advance him a few bottles on my account. 

" I have not time for more, or I would say some- 
thing about Welcker's ' Theognis ; ' he has hacked 
and minced his author most unmercifully, and not 
having formed a true judgment of the time in which 
he lived, has obelized passages for no other reason 
than that they did not square with his preconceived 
chronology. The account which Brunck gives of 
the Parisian MSS. shows that he has taken a most 
unwarrantable licence in making mincemeat of his 
author in the way he has done. 

" I have no letter of Southey here." 

"Malta, October 14th, 1843. 

" My dear Bartle, 

" Your letter of the 29th ultimo was 
lying open on my table all yesterday morning, 
waiting to be answered by the English packet ; but 
the other letters which I had to write turned out to 
be so long and rambling, and I was so tired with 
standing at the desk, that it was left to stand over 
till to-day, to be answered per favour of the French 
steamer to Marseilles. This, I fear, will aggravate 
the charge for postage, but, in point of time, may 
turn out to be rather an economy than otherwise. 

" I thank you for your offer of going halves with 



able letters written by her in her banishment, are not printed 
in the very idiomatic Suffolk dialect in which they were 
written. 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 325 

me in our relations of consanguinity to Mrs. G- 



I have had a letter which I took to be hers, lying 
unopened, but which, upon opening it preparatory 
to writing to you, proves to be from a person whom 
you have occasionally assisted, though he has had 

no ground of claim upon you, viz. . I 

shall send him something by this post, which, I 
hope, will prevent him from troubling you. As he 
never bullied you at Eton, he has no right to make 
you his tributary now. Poor fellow ! I could not 
help thinking of him as I was doing the 98th Frag- 
ment of ' Theognis,' ' watching and importuning 
every friend.' Talking of ' Theognis,' I am told 
from a person likely to know, that the critique is by 
Hallam. I have not yet seen it, for my periodicals 
come in very irregularly, and I rarely go to the 
garrison library. Whoever the writer may be, I 
think, as you say, it is rather cool and easy to affix my 
name to an anonymous work privately distributed. 
" This laborious epistle has again been delayed to 
this day, Oct. 25. In the meantime, I have received 
the Review. It is not uncivil, but my name is 
repeated ad nauseam thirty times, altogether, one 
would imagine that I was a candidate for fame ! " 

" Malta, May 2gt/i, 1844. 
" My dear George, 

" Though I have many letters clamouring 
for their respective answers, I must not omit to 
thank you for your green morocco present. 1 First 
of the preface. It is, I think, excellent in point of 
feeling. 

"I am like the man in the old 'Kitchen Al- 
manac ' with all the constellations poking at him, 
so that the utmost I can do is to distribute a line 



1 A "Parentalia" drawn up and prefaced by his brother 
•George. 



326 MEMOIR OF 

or two apiece, in answer to my pocketful of let- 
ters For the present I am tolerably- 
well, though somewhat weak on my legs, and as. 
Master Waters used to say ' numb ' in my hearing ; 
but he used also to say ' numb in my understand- 
ing,' which perhaps also may be my case ; but I 
put it to the test from time to time with bits of 
translation. 

" I am sorry to have received a bad report of the 
condition in which the ilex acorns arrived. You 
were to have had a share, and shall, please God, 
this year, if I live to see them ripen." 

Towards the end of this year, and in 1845, I had 
again the happiness of being for some weeks under 
my uncle's roof, on my way home from India. 
The lapse of ten years had greatly impaired his 
bodily vigour, but not the clearness and activity 
of his mind, nor was there any change in the warmth 
of his affection for all who had once been dear to 
him. The filial care of Lord and Lady Hamilton 
Chichester had preserved all the arrangements which, 
in earlier years, his wife and sister had devised for 
his comfort in his lonely island life, and had added 
much that his advancing age needed. His eye- 
sight was nearly as good as of old, and so were his 
extraordinary powers of reading continuously for 
many hours at a stretch, and the wonderful tenacity 
and accuracy of his memory for what he read or 
composed. He went less abroad than formerly, 
partly owing to increasing bodily infirmity, partly 
to the loss of old friends and his dislike to the task 
of making new ones. There were also many changes 
in the island which were distasteful to him. It had 
become a bustling place, full of commercial activity, 
and of people always in a hurry. The old order of 
things had been replaced by a new Constitution, 
better adapted, no doubt, to the altered circum- 
stances of the place, and to the political activity 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 327 

awakened among the people, but little in accord- 
ance with that quiet once the peculiar charm of 
Malta, which, like everything Maltese, used to have 
a character of its own, equally removed from the 
luxurious idleness of Naples, and from the Oriental 
torpor which, before the days of steam navigation, 
infected most places further east. With the new- 
order of political ideas had come in many religious 
innovations which, though they little affected him 
personally, he thought likely to work ill for those 
around him and after him. The Roman Catholic 
Church in Malta had for centuries been strongly 
national, if the word can be used where the area is 
so limited. The clergy, who, in old times, seldom 
went further afield for their education or for travel 
than to the great monasteries in Sicily, were the 
recognized guardians of insular rights and privileges ; 
and to such an extent used this to be carried, that 
Mr. Frere told me he had found instances of the 
Dominicans arrayed as the champions of popular 
right, to defend the Maltese from the illegal ex- 
actions of the ruling order ; and the servants of 
the Inquisition engaged in escorting market carts 
through the gates of Valetta, to protect the poor 
peasantry from the extortionate demands of re- 
tainers requiring more than the customary toll for 
the Grand Master and the Knights of St. John. 
These island clergy had always, from the first rising 
against the French invaders, been loyal in their 
advocacy of British rule, and they had enjoyed in 
return, from the English Government, a degree of 
consideration for all their customary rights and 
privileges which sometimes occasioned murmurs 
in Exeter Hall when it was thought to exceed 
the limits of reasonable toleration. But with the 
advent of reforms in the political administration, a 
considerable change was observable in the disposi- 
tion of those who had the direction of popular 



328 MEMOIR OF 

opinion in ecclesiastical affairs. Ultramontane 
preachers, themselves foreigners to the island, were 
commissioned to denounce from the pulpit what 
they considered the infidel tendencies of the English 
Government ; and Mr. Frere found that the universal 
affection with which he was regarded among all 
orders of Maltese did not protect him from being 
sometimes held up as an object for popular aversion, 
because he was an Englishman, and a member of 
the English Church. 

Nor did he find much to console him in the 
general aspect of political affairs, of which he was to 
the last a careful student. Of many of the measures 
of the various administrations after the Reform 
Bill, he very cordially approved. The best of them 
were, he said, the same measures which Pitt would 
have brought forward had breathing time been 
allowed him, and which Canning, but for the de- 
sertion of those who ought to have supported him, 
might have carried. But he viewed with alarm the 
growing tendency of statesmen of all parties to 
follow, instead of aspiring to lead and direct, public 
opinion — a tendency which he foresaw must often 
transfer the initiation of great measures from the 
wisest and best-informed to those who were simpiy 
discontented with the existing order of things. He 
particularly disliked the new name under which the 
broken ranks of the Tories had been rallied after 
the Reform Bill. " Why do you talk of Conser- 
vatives ?" he asked ; " a Conservative is only a Tory 
who is ashamed of himself; " and he was especially 
indignant with men who, knowing better than the 
unreflecting rank and file of their party, attempted 
to defend any abuse long after they knew it to be 
indefensible, and thus left the correction of such 
abuse to violent or, at best, unfriendly hands. He 
was habitually inclined to take a very gloomy view 
of the political future ; but he never ceased to urge 



JOHN HOOKHAM FEE RE. 329 

on younger men the duty of hoping the best for 
the state. " It is the privilege as well as the duty 
of your age to hope," he said. 

Many of the fragments of his " Table Talk " have 
found insertion in the foregoing pages. The fol- 
lowing, which have for the most part no special 
reference to any particular period of his life, were 
noted, some at this time, others in various earlier 
years, and by different persons : — 

" It is clear Cervantes quite changed his plan after 
he had written the first part of ' Don Quixote.' 
He begins with fights with flocks of sheep and 
windmills, and other practical jokes ; but after he 
had published it, an author whom he mentions in 
the second part 1 wrote a continuation of 'Don 
Quixote,' in which the knight was made to fall 
among people who understand and honour him. 
This struck Cervantes as affording a much finer 
field for fancy and humour than the accidents 
which happened to the Don among ignorant boors, 
and he adopted the idea in the second part in all 
the scenes relating to the Duke and Duchess, which 
are infinitely the best." 

" Every original author paints himself in some 
character in his works, as Cervantes in the latter 
part of ' Don Quixote,' Moliere in the ' Humoriste,' 
Smollett in ' Roderick Random,' and afterwards in 
' Matthew Bramble.' I have no doubt that in 
1 Hamlet ' Shakespeare was describing himself. No 
man imagines himself in a lower situation than he 
actually fills, and Hamlet is, what Shakespeare 
imagines he would have been, had he been a prince. 

1 The author is not named. He called himself Alonzo 
Fernandez de Avellaneda ; and is supposed by some to have 
been Luis de Aliaga, the King's Confessor, and by others 
Juan Blanco de Paz, a Dominican friar. [Vide Ticknor's 
" History of Spanish Literature."] Cervantes only mentions 
his birth-place, Tarragona. 



330 MEMOIR OF 

His advice to the players, and his morbid love of 
contemplating the relics of mortality, and their 
constant association with terms relating to the law, 
which Whiter observed upon, are all characteristic. 
I have no doubt if one knew where Shakespeare 
had served his apprenticeship in a scrivener's office, 
we should find it looked out on a graveyard. 
' Hamlet ' falls off at the end, ' Macbeth ' (and two 
others) are the only plays where the end is equal to 
the beginning. It is the same with Aristophanes ; 
the ' Frogs,' ' Knights,' and ' Birds ' are the only 
perfect plays of his ; this is not to be wondered at, 
considering in what haste they must have been 
written. I dare say Shakespeare often wrote with 
the prompter's boy sitting on the stairs waiting for 
' copy.' Lope de Vega wrote plays as fast as he 
could put pen to paper, and you always find that 
the first two or three hundred lines are good." 

" At one time I used to read every novel that 
came out, and seldom found one which had not 
some chapters very good. They are those parts 
where the writer is describing what he has himself 
seen ; and every man has seen something which, 
if he would describe it exactly, would make a 
good scene in a novel. 

" A really good novel one can read quite as often 
as a good play. There are some of Scott's which 
I read almost every year, and some of Gait's. It 
was a great misfortune for him that he lived in the 
same age as Scott. I remember the 'Trials of 
Margaret Lindsay' striking me when I first read 
it, quite as much as some of the Waverley novels 
did. 

" Have you read Lady Duff Gordon's translation 
of the ' Amber Witch ? ' 1 It is quite the best thing 
of the kind I have read for a long time ; at first 

1 In Murray's " Home and Colonial Library." 



JOHN HOOK HAM FRERE. 331 

I could hardly believe it was not a genuine chro- 
nicle of the time, and the translation seems admira- 
bly done. I can think of nothing so nearly ap- 
proaching ' Robinson Crusoe,' unless it be ' Pen- 
rose's Journal.' I was so taken with Penrose when 
I first read it, that I used to buy up all the copies 
I found on the bookstalls, and give them to my 
friends. I could never understand why it did not 
become more popular with boys and with old people 
too, and I never could learn who wrote it, or whether 
it was, or was not, a genuine journal of a cast- 
away." 

" I am surprised to find how few young men of 
the present day know anything of Swift. He is 
quite one of our best models of racy forcible idio- 
matic prose. He is sometimes savagely coarse and 
indecent, but there is less danger of corruption of 
morals or opinions in the whole of Swift's works 
than in almost any one volume of any modern 
French writer of fiction. No man was ever at- 
tracted to, or made tolerant of vice by reading Swift ; 
but it is not easy to find any modern French work 
which is at once witty, and free from all apology 
for* or incentive to evil. I suspect it is because the 
materials of modern French fiction are usually 
drawn from the more corrupt classes of society, 
and their authors neglect much in ordinary French 
life which is not only excellent in itself morally, 
but really better adapted for dramatic purposes 
than the common run of French heroes and he- 
roines." 

" One of the best pictures of modern French 
manners I know, and one quite free from all that 
is objectionable, is Leclerq's ' Proverbes Drama- 
tiques.' They are very slight sketches, but full 
of wit and humour, and I should think depict 
French society in the middle ranks very truly." 

Speaking of Leclerq's " Proverbes " to Mr. Nu- 
gent, he said, " If I were obliged to give up either 



332 MEMOIR OF 

Moliere or Leclerq, I am not sure that I should not 
surrender Moliere." To which Mr. Nugent ob- 
served that " Mr. Frere was hardly a fair judge, 
as he knew Moliere by heart, and would not, 
therefore, lose anything by giving him up." 

In reply to a lament on the disuse of the old 
custom, common formerly in England, as it still is 
in Malta and in many southern countries, of ad- 
dressing the wayfarer in inscriptions of more per- 
manent interest than the merits of " Warren's 
Blacking," or the number of miles to the next 
village, he said : — 

" When I lived at Roydon, I used to think I 
would celebrate my churchwardenship by putting 
up a few such inscriptions. But it was difficult to 
decide what language to choose. If you wrote in 
Latin no one but the parson would understand 
you ; and in English it was not easy to write on 
the topics most interesting to the country traveller, 
in terms befitting the dignity of a churchwarden. 
Here are some verses for a bridge I intended to 
have built across the Waveney below Roydon : 

The Parish vestry, persons of much taste, 

Permit me to enclose this piece of waste ; 

I gave them in return the field called Darrers, 

Let this preserve my fame from censure's arrers [East 

Anglian for ' arrows ']. 
And further, to accommodate all people, 
I built this bridge and beautified the steeple. 

" I thought they were in the proper churchwarden 
style ; and so was the motto for the White Hart at 
Roydon, when the road was altered : 

Stranger, be not offended or concern'd 

If you discover that this road is turn'd. 

A bowl of punch, or shilling's worth of porter, 

I'll bet you, that the present road is shorter. 

"That would have been intelligible and inter- 
esting to most of the people who would have read 
it. But then some of my travelled neighbours 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 333 

would have thought it very vulgar. So, you see, 
here (at the Pieta) I have stuck to Latin." 

" I suspect that Tacitus' ignorance and mistakes 
about the Christians were partly affected — it seems 
to have been the established fashionable rule to 
know nothing about them — the same tone continued 
very late, indeed as long as Paganism subsisted, or 
a Pagan writer was left. It is most absurdly re- 
markable in Zosimus." 

Captain Basil Hall remarked (1834) that "he 
had met with more intentional incivility in a fort- 
night in France than during all his. long stay in 
America." 

Mr. Frere observed : — 

" I think the tone adopted by Englishmen gene- 
rally towards America is very much to be deplored. 
We have numbers of American travellers here in 
Malta, and I never met one who had not some very 
good points. We should try to promote that kind 
of feeling which should lead to a union between the 
two nations for establishing the supremacy of the 
Anglo-Saxon race over the whole of the western 
continent. 

" At the end of the American war, if we had not 
been so utterly exhausted, it was a scheme of Fox's 
and some of his party, to have promoted an union 
between England and the United States, to assist 
an insurrection which then raged in Peru." 

Speaking of some American review on English 
politics, he said : — 

" The tone is particularly good, especially where 
they notice the vulgar abuse heaped on them as a 
nation, by . 

" As regards our own English politics, if we go 
on as we do now, there will be little chance of any 
really impartial judgments of our public men among 
ourselves ; and future historians may have to go to 
American writers for all really unbiassed contem- 
porary criticism." 



334 MEMOIR OF 

" I wish you young gentlemen would not talk so 
much of 'our Indian empire.' — An empire is a 
very good thing in its way, but we are in danger of 
forgetting the thrift and other homely commercial 
virtues which helped us to that empire. When 
I lived in the country, I used to observe that there 
was no fool like a fool in a ring fence — the man 
who was always telling you ' his property was in a 
ring fence,' till he got to pride himself on having 
as little as possible in common with his poorer 
neighbours. I am sometimes afraid of that kind of 
spirit infecting us in India. That was not Malcolm's 
nor Munro's way, nor Elphinstone's, who, I take it, 
was the greatest man you have ever had in our days." 

In answer to a remark, that the French seemed 
able to make but little out of Algiers, he said : 

" Your Frenchman is always trying to be im- 
posing, and to make an impression ; there are some 
people who don't like that, and I fancy the Arabs 
don't." 

In reply to a question why, with his opinions 
regarding the Spanish insurrection against the 
French, he did not feel more sympathy with the 
cause of liberty in Greece, he said : — 

" There was no kind of similarity between the 
two cases. I was sorry the insurrection in Greece 
broke out when it did. The Greeks had the com- 
merce, the diplomacy, the education, in short, every 
branch of the internal administration of Turkey, 
and much of the external, in their own hands ; and, 
had the outbreak been delayed for ten years, they 
would have expelled the Turks from the whole of 
their European possessions. I do not see what we 
have to do meddling in Greece at this present time 
(1844-5), or why we should trouble ourselves with 
what the French are doing there. If we act with 
them we may be drawn into a contest with Russia ; 
if against them, we shall be fighting the battles of 
Russia." 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 335 

" It is a pity when all Europe was eager to go to 
war, fourteen years ago, we did not let them, and 
keep ourselves quiet the while. Had we done so 
we should not now have been complaining of com- 
mercial combinations against us. We never got 
any thanks from Europe, though we have three 
times saved it from becoming subject to one power. 
We saved them from the Spaniards in Philip II. 's 
time, and from the French in Marlborough's and 
again in Napoleon's, and we never got any thanks 
for it." 

In answer to a remark that it was strange a mind 
like Milton's should have been blind to the advan- 
tages of a monarchical form of government for Eng- 
land, he observed : — 

" It was no wonder all the ardent imaginative 
spirits of the' time of the Great Rebellion were led 
away into republicanism ; they had before their 
eyes the example of the Dutch, bearding such a 
power as the Spaniards then were, and naturally 
attributed all to the republican form of their govern- 
ment." 

" But then the republics they imagined were 
something widely different from the democracies 
of modern days." 

Talking of recent improvements in agriculture : — 

" There is nothing of such real permanent value 
to a nation. How little remains of the vast wealth 
acquired by Florence or the Netherlands which can 
be compared, as a permanent source of national 
riches, with their improved agriculture." 

The following is one of the latest letters of Mr. 
Frere which has been preserved. It is addressed 
to Mr. G. T. Clark, at Bombay. 

" Malta, March $ist, 1845. 
" I was much gratified by your obliging letter, 
showing you were aware how much I feel interested 
in your proceedings ; and, if Providence is pleased to 



336 MEMOIR OF 

prolong our dominion in India, your Railway will, I 
am persuaded, be one of the chief means employed for 
its maintenance, and ultimately change the condition 
of the country ; and the rupee will then be enabled 
to find its way back to the ryot, out of -whose fist 
it has been wrenched by the collector; and our 
troops .... will no longer — I should hope — be of 
necessity disabled from moving with their artillery, 

etc I often used to wonder how the Romans 

contrived to keep the whole world in order, with a 
force, such as Gibbon enumerates, apparently so 
inadequate ; the secret lay, I am persuaded, in their 
system of roads, which enabled them to bring an 
overwhelming force upon any point where insubor- 
dination manifested itself. They did not allow time 
for the Ragojees, 1 whom we hear of, to grow up to 
be Sivajees, and to found a predatory empire like 
the original Maharattas. However, this fear, I 
hope, is got over for the present. 

" Surely it should be thought a shame for English- 
men that the Spaniards should have outrun us in 
the race of improvement, yet so it is ; they have 
already established railroads in the island of Cuba, 
and this they have done under all the disadvantages 
of having to execute great public works by slave 
labour ; but they had the advantage of a man of 
talent and energy in the person of their Governor, 
and I suppose also of some clever able engineer 
like . Why then should Bombay be behind- 
hand ? I should wish to see a line to Nagpoor ; if 
that were once done, the great Zemindars and 
capitalists of Calcutta will feel obliged to meet you 
half-way ; the disadvantage of position, which 
they now endeavour to elude by expensive and 
clumsy contrivances, will then be reduced to the 
difference of not many hours. While our commu- 



1 A freebooting Maharatta, whose exploits about this time 
caused some anxiety to our political officers in the Deccan. 



JOHN HOOKIIAM FEE RE. 337 

nication continues through Egypt, the priority of 
intelligence cannot by any contrivance be long with- 
held from Bombay ; the wisest then, as well as the 
fairest way, is to endeavour to reduce that difference 
to a minimum by the utmost rapidity of communi- 
cation. It was the maxim of some great Eastern 
conqueror, ' that the world should always be kept in 
astonishment and expectation,' and this, though a 
work of peace, would have that effect. ' What a 
strange people these Ingilesi are, that enable us to 
fly over the country like birds.' Half a dozen 
battles and sieges would not, I believe, excite the 
same impression of our superiority. 1 I say Ingilesi, 
for we ought never to allow ourselves to be called 
Feringhes. No ! The FeringJies were the allies of 
Tippo Said, the Ingilesi subdued Tippo, and drove 
the Feringhes out of India. 

" This is the way that it all happened : — ' In the 
beginning, 100 years ago, the Feringhes and the 
Ingilesi had each a trading company, but as the 
Ingilesi had more success in trade, the Feringhes 
endeavoured to gain the advantage in war and 
politics ; and in this way they succeeded for a time, 
and had nearly driven out the Ingilesi ; but at last 
the Ingilesi got the better of them in war, as they 
had before in commerce.' 

" This is an abrege of the modern history of India 
in nsnm scholarum. 

" But I have not time to go on rambling at this 
rate ; only believe that I shall feel most interested 
in your proceedings, and grateful for any account 
of your progress which you may at any time find 
leisure to send me. I cannot promise for my own 

1 The railway here referred to, the first defined railway 
project in India, was a line from Bombay to Callian, pro- 
posed by Mr. Clark in 1843, whilst on a visit to Sir George 
Arthur, then Governor of Bombay, who warmly encouraged 
it. It ultimately formed the first section of the present Great 
Indian Peninsula Railway from Bombay to Calcutta. 

Z 



338 MEMOIR OF 

part to be a very regular correspondent ; the posture 
and act of writing being at times very irksome to 
me, and obliging me to set pen to paper by fits 
and snatches, as you may perceive by the date of 
this. I am at a loss how to direct this ; and I 
believe I must take the liberty of sending it under 
cover to Sir George Arthur." 

During the whole of 1844, he had continued to 
enjoy his usual health, and, beyond a slight increase 
of feebleness in movement, those around him could 
detect no mark of the increasing infirmities of age. 
But, in 1845, he had an attack of apoplexy, and in 
the first days of January, 1846, a repetition of the 
paralytic attack, partly due to suppressed gout, 
which had alarmed his friends at Rome five years 
before. 1 Every remedy which the best medical 

1 The following extracts from a letter of Lady Hamilton 
Chichester's on the subject, give many characteristic details, 
which will interest those who knew and loved him. 

" In January 1841, at Rome, Mr. Frere had his first attack 
of apoplexy, from which he rallied so entirely as to leave no 
traces of it in his mind or general health till the spring ot 
1845, when he sometimes said he felt feeble on his limbs — 
he had a presentiment that he was going to have an attack, 
as, on once starting for a drive to see the new aqueduct, 
opened in May or June, he turned round to Lord Hamilton, 
when getting into the carriage, and said, ' Ask Nony to bring 
her little lancet in case I should have a fit.' I was in another 
carriage. I jumped out and got the lancet, and then kept 
close behind his carriage; all went well; he walked about 
and forgot his fears." 

After giving an account of a seizure Mr. Frere had about a 
week after this, which rendered him in spite of all that the 
best medical advice and skill and care could do, entirely 
unconscious for some time, Lady Hamilton Chichester 
relates that as soon as animation had been gradually re- 
stored, and he was put into bed by the doctors' orders, — " liie 
room darkened and he was told that he must keep quiet," — 
he said, "Don't shut me up, and give me a book/" This 
raised a general cry, that he must not attempt to read. He 
was left alone, in bed, in the dark, the door ajar, through 
which his friends and the doctors could watch him, as 
the doctors expected another attack which would be fatal. 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 339 

skill, and the ever-watchful affection of Lord and 
Lady Hamilton Chichester could suggest, was tried, 
but without effect ; he never recovered speech or 
consciousness, and passed away without apparent 
suffering on the 7th January. He was laid beside 



About an hour afterwards, they saw him " look round the 
room, and finding himself alone, he deliberately got out of 
bed and walked quickly to his desk, on which was lying the 
book he had been reading when he was seized, and returned 

quickly to the bed with it ! The ruling passion of 

life still strong in death." After a while he cried out, " Is 
any one there ?" The servant went in. " Open that shutter 
and shut the door." The doctor and I allowed all this to be 
done, to watch the result, the poor doctor, so utterly con- 
founded at the strength and clearness of the man who had 
been all but dead two hours before, feared it was a flare-up 
of the candle." .... 

" From this attack he completely recovered, his mind as 
clear and his memory as perfect as in his most youthful days. 

" In the month of January (on the 6th), Dr. Stilon came 
about half-past five o'clock. He went to see Mr. Frere. Mr. 
Bourchier and Lord Hamilton were sitting with him, and he 
was giving them a clear account of Lord Sidmouth's adminis- 
tration and of everything connected with it — the conversation 
was still going on when the servant went in to say it was 
time to dress for dinner. On this, Mr. Bourchier and Dr. 
Stilon left the room, and Stilon came back to me to say that 
he had not for months seen Mr. Frere so bright and so well ! 
It was past six . . . he went into the drawing-room, there 
were about eight to dinner. I always went out the last (he 
never dined at table) and he said to me, putting out his 
hand, ' I am rather chilly and shall like my soup.' — Beppo 
with his tray was at the door. — I passed on to the dining- 
room, but before I sat down Beppo ran back to me, touch- 
ing my shoulder and saying, ' Come quick.' I was not 
(as you know the distance, across one room only) a minute 
— he was sitting up in the position I had left him — the 
eyes open, motionless. ... I went over to him and said, 
' You are not well,' at the same time supporting him with 
a cushion and my own arm. He looked at me with a gentle 
smile — it was the last ! He remained in that position for 
two hours. Stilon was there immediately, but all hope was 
over. He breathed gently for a while — then louder — then 
louder — and I was hoping from that change — but it only pre- 



340 MEMOIR OF 

his wife in the English burial-ground, in one of the 
Floriana outworks overlooking the Quarantine Har- 
bour, where a sarcophagus bears the following in- 
scription to his memory : — 

PRtEHONORABILIS VIR JOANNES HOOKHAM 
FRERE 

Ab ingenua stirpe in agro Britannorum Norfolciensi oriundus 

Regii ablegati Munere in Lusitania, 
Eodemque una et altera vice in Hispania, egregie perfunctus, 
Melitam denique, uxoris suae valetudinis causa, se recepit, 

atque ibi 25 annos commoratus est. 

Hie cultu Literarum quas semper ab adolescentia in deliciis 

habuit senectutem oblectans, 

(Minime interea suorum immemor) 

Eruditos Commercio Studiorum Familiares vero et Advenas 

Comitate & Hospitalitate 

Pauperes etiam largissima Munincentia ita sibi divinxerat, 

Ut interitus ejus publica queedam Calamitas fuisse videretur, 

Et nomen post se reliquerit pio omnium amove prosequendum, 

Quod faxit Deus ut Vitas quoque sempiternal Libro 

Ob Christi merita inscriptum reperiatur. 

Natus est Londini 21 Mens. Maii 1769— Obiit 7 Mens. 

Jan" 1846. 

On the spot where he had so long lived, the 

ceded those three last sighs which always attend a calm 
death, and which once heard can never be forgotten ! Thus 
the dear old man died as he had lived ! He had received the 
Sacrament on Christmas-day, Mr. Cleugh having come to 
the house to give it to him with Lord Hamilton. They had 
been forbidden to go to church in consequence of the cold. 
Hundreds crowded round the doors all day, the servants were 
followed to the market to know if it could be ' really true.' 
The day of his funeral all the shops were closed. He was 
borne to the grave on the shoulders of his own labourers. 
All the Maltese of the upper class attended to the entrance 
of the burying ground, and most of them went in and 
attended the service, a very rare circumstance. 

" My husband went as chief mourner with Constantine, 
and for three long hours stood over the vault after all had 
left, except Mr. Bourchier and two or three servants, and 
Constantine, till he saw the vault built up and the last stone 
placed." 



JOHX HOOKHAM FRERE. 341 

general grief of all classes, but especially of the 
poor, was his best epitaph ; and even now, when 
the generation of those who were the objects of his 
active sympathy has passed away, there are Maltese 
who will point out his tomb as the grave of the 
noble-hearted Englishman, known in his day as 
the best friend of their fellow-islanders in want or 
distress. 

In his own land, he has left behind him a better 
and more enduring monument, and it is possible 
that some trace of his labours, if not of his name, 
may survive in our literature, long after the institu- 
tions which he loved so well have undergone the 
changes, which, in the latter years of his life, he 
thought so imminent. 

It is still, perhaps, too early to judge of the place 
he will permanently occupy among his literary con- 
temporaries, for much of what he wrote is but now 
published, and he has been hitherto known chiefly 
by the estimation in which he was held by a com- 
paratively small circle of personal friends. 

The American critic, from whom I have already 
quoted, notices the " curiously scanty and barren " 
sources of information regarding one whose name 
is so frequently met with in the Memoirs of Scott, 
of Byron, of Southey, and of Moore, but " of whose 
character, genius, and literary performances, few, 
even among the professed lovers of literature, have 
more than an indistinct impression ;" and yet, he 
adds, " there was no one among his contemporaries 
whose intellectual gifts were more original, more 
various, or of a rarer quality." 

"It is not wholly to the freak of fortune, or the 
malicious blindness of fame, that the limited repu- 
tation of Mr. Frere is to be charged. He cared 
nothing for vulgar applause. He was too indolent 
to push his way in the long procession of aspirants 
to the Temple of Fame, and far too fastidious to 
like the company he would have been forced to 



342 MEMOIR OF 

meet at the door. His literary temper was aristo- 
cratic, and he preferred the quiet appreciation of a 
few clever and congenial men of culture, to the 
troublesome admiration of the great public. Writing 
neither for bread nor renown, he published but little, 
and only a few copies of his books were printed, so 
that all of them are, bibliographically speaking, 
rare. 

"He was one of those men, of whom there are 
always too few, with ample and self-sufficing power, 
who can do so easily what others find it hard to 
accomplish that they are deprived of the sting of 
ambition, and are content to enjoy while others are 
compelled to labour. His temperament, his taste, 
his culture, his position, united to make him the 
type of the man of literary genius, as distinguished 
from the professional author. His fulness of ac- 
complishment saved him from dissatisfaction with 
what he did ; and if he wrote but little, it was not 
that 

Toujours mecontent de ce qu'il vient de faire 
II plait a tout le monde, et ne saurait se plaire, 

but that he had a just confidence that he could do 
what would suit himself, and that no one else could 
do better." 1 

His politics were those of the school of Pitt. 
From conviction, not less than from early asso- 
ciation, he had a rooted distrust as well as dislike 
of sudden revolution, which he believed generally 
led, through a period of anarchy, to despotism 



1 Norton, " North American Review," vol. cvii. 1868, p. 136. 
Coleridge's opinion of Mr. Frere's powers has been already 
quoted. Lord Brougham, in a letter to Mr. Frere's nephew, 
the Rev. Constantine Frere, dated 24th January, 1854, 
wrote : — " The pleasure I had in seeing you was, like other 
sweets, mingled with bitter ; for it recalled the memory of 
your uncles whom we have lost, and for both of whom, J. H. 
and William (Bartle I knew much less), I had a sincere 
v regard, for J. H. the greatest admiration." 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 343 

more severe than that which originally drove the 
oppressed to seek for change. But he had a pro- 
found abhorrence of every form of oppression and 
tyranny, more especially of that which would inter- 
fere with national liberties, or allow any one nation 
or class to domineer over others. He looked on 
rank and property as held in trust, on the condition 
that the classes enjoying them should ever be ready 
to stake all they possessed to secure the freedom 
and happiness of their fellow-countrymen. 

He had little faith in those who professed them- 
selves mere mouth-pieces of numerical majori- 
ties. He held that the English people at large 
were better and more truly represented by men 
chosen for their general character and weight in 
the community, and because the people knew them 
and liked them, and felt that they sympathized with 
their constituents, than by men bound to advocate 
particular measures. He believed that power was 
better exercised by those whose education, rank, 
and property tended to make them independent in 
forming and fearless in expressing their own opi- 
nions, than by delegates pledged to express the 
opinions of others. 

With many of the changes which he saw carried 
out in his later years he thoroughly sympathized ; 
but he mistrusted the mode in which and the 
motives from which they were effected, as tending 
to impair the stability of institutions which he 
wished to see reformed and perpetuated — not 
swept away. 

Of the traits of personal character which endeared 
him to all who came in contact with him, some 
traces may be found in his literary remains and in 
the correspondence from which, in the preceding 
pages, a few extracts have been given : they bear 
more or less the impress of the playful humour, the 
kindliness, the generosity, which characterized the 
most trivial words and actions of his every-day life. 



344 MEMOIR OF 

But it is not from such evidence that a judgment 
can be formed of the higher qualities of the man. 
Those who knew him most intimately soon dis- 
covered that the largest tolerance and charity were 
not incompatible with a thorough contempt for all 
that was mean and base : among other marks of 
true nobility of character he possessed the royal 
art of never humiliating one in any way inferior to 
himself. " Meaner natures near him, while they saw 
and felt his superiority, tasted the luxury of feeling 
their own aims elevated, and of discovering a higher 
standard than that by which they had been accus- 
tomed to regulate their own actions. It was this 
quality which secured for him at one and the same 
time the a'ffection of the poorest and weakest, and 
the respect of the best and noblest who knew him 
well enough to judge of his true character. 

H. B. E. F. 

The Highwood, 

Sept. ist, 1 871. 



Since the above Memoir was first published I 
have been repeatedly asked to give some definite 
statement of what was Mr. Hookham Frere's reli- 
gious belief, or of the light in which he might be 
supposed to view the leading modern schools of 
religious thought. 

His early training had been in what a century 
ago was regarded as the orthodox school of English 
theology. The books which were put in his hands 
as a young man comprised all the great divines of 
the Church of England, from Wyclyffe through 
Hooper and Andrewes, Jeremy Taylor, Ken and 
Tillotson, down to Home, Bishop of Norwich, and 
Jones of Nayland, whom he used to meet at his 
father's house. 

Later in life he found much in Coleridge's 
writings with, which he cordially agreed. 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 345 

He was fully alive to the evils resulting from the 
long-continued stagnation of all internal action in 
the Church, whilst non-residence and pluralism and 
prevalent inattention to the spiritual wants of a 
growing population had forced so many earnest 
men into the ranks of Dissent. 

Of Wesleyanism, and its effects on the English 
Church as manifested in the development of the 
Evangelical school, he always spoke with respect ; 
of Wesley, personally, with admiration, as of one 
who, but for some impatience of his own joined to 
the obstinate bigotry of his opponents, might have 
completed the work of the Reformation by restoring 
to our Church that element of growth which every 
legislative settlement has necessarily a tendency to 
check. 

But there was much in the action and utterances 
of the more demonstrative followers of the Evan- 
gelical school which prevented its securing the 
entire sympathy of men of very refined taste and 
keen sense of humour. The earlier works .of 
Maurice ; or of those of the Oxford school who 
joined to the earnest personal piety of the Evan- 
gelicals the culture and learning of the great divines 
of the Reformation, seemed to him to promise 
more fairly for the future of the English Church. 
But he lived to see somewhat of the zeal from which 
he had hoped for active work wasted in frivolities 
of ornament and ritual ; and he was not permitted 
to witness how much of substantial growth has ac- 
companied the reaction against the stagnation of 
the last century. 

The Church of Rome he had known chiefly either 
in decay — as in Portugal and Spain — or in the full 
enjoyment of apparently unquestioned supremacy 
under the protection of the English flag, as in Malta. 
He had always been warmly in favour of conceding 
the most liberal toleration to that Church in Ireland 
where it was the Church of the erreat bulk of the 



346 MEMOIR OF 

people, and had long been subject to oppressive 
distinctions and restrictions for the maintenance of 
which no present justification could, he thought, be 
urged. It came upon him in his later years with 
something of a painful surprise, that under the 
guidance of political agitators the old aggressive 
spirit of the Romish Church was still capable of 
active development in forms hostile to religious 
freedom, and to unfettered discussion of truth. 

Towards all who differed from him on questions 
of religion the prevalent feeling of his mind was 
one of the fullest and most sympathetic toleration. 
He had warm personal friendship with men who 
fanatically held the most opposite religious opinions. 
He seemed never to doubt that a man who clung 
earnestly to a form of religious belief opposed to 
his own, might, after all, be as good a Christian as 
himself; not that he was himself latitudinarian, but 
he held that the range of subjects on which absolute 
certainty was demonstrable by religious controversy 
was wisely limited, and that Christianity was for all 
mankind, and not for any one nation, still less for 
any one form of mind or temperament. 

It would be a mistake to infer from the rarity of 
any religious discussion in his letters or conversa- 
tion that religion was little in his thoughts. 
Especially during the latter part of his life, when 
the language of the Hebrew poets afforded him his 
chosen intellectual exercise, his mind dwelt very 
habitually on the realities of the world to come. 
But to him, and to many of his generation, reli- 
gion was not a matter of anxious discussion but 
of settled conviction, and, withal, as touching re- 
lations between the Creator and Redeemer with 
a man's own soul, so sacred, that he would as 
soon have thought of discussing with a stranger 
their respective feelings towards a wife or parent, 
as their religious experiences. His religion, more- 
over, was not a scheme of ultimate selfish aggran- 



JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. 



347 



disement, but a partial revelation of an existence 
dimly seen now, though extending to all eternity; 
a rule of conduct by which alone could be ordered 
all that was high and noble and enduring in life ; 
a standard for measuring affinity to that Divine 
Nature whose revealed will was, he held, the only 
sure foundation of the believer's practice. 

Wressil Lodge, 

Wimbledon, August, 1872. 




ADDITIONAL NOTES. 

Page 41. — Through the kindness of Mr. Fuller Maitland, of 
Stansted, Herts, I have had an opportunity of examining his copy 
of the original numbers of the "Anti- Jacobin," which appears to 
have belonged to Mr. Canning, and bears numerous marginal notes 
in his own handwriting relative to the authorship of most of the 
pieces which were written by him and Geo. Ellis. The only other 
writers noted are Macdonald (one article), Lord Liverpool (two 
articles), Lord Grenville (who is noted as the author of letters signed 
"Detector," Nos. 18 and 31, of March 26th and July 2nd ; an article 
on the Treaty of Pavia, in No. 14, of 12th February, 1798), and 
Pitt, who is noted as the author of the articles on Finance, in Nos. 2 
and 3, of the 27th and 30th November, 1797 ; Nos. 10 and 12, of 
15th and 29th January, 1798; No. 25, of April 30th; and the 
Review of the Session, in No. 35, of July 2nd. The fact of Pitt 
having contributed these six articles, one of them in the penultimate 
number of the Journal, seems established by the testimony of this 
copy. 

Page 85, 1. 17. Vide Alison. — It is strange that Robertson himself 
does not record this incident in the interview, but merely mentions 
that he recalled to Romana's mind the first occasion on which Mr. 
Frere had dined with him at Toledo, and a picture that he had seen 
there, and that he then showed Romana a small fragment of Mr. 
Frere's handwriting, which convinced Romana of his claim to be 
relied on [vide his "Narrative of a Secret Mission to the Danish 
Islands in 1808." London, 1863, page 65]. 




INDEX. 




DDINGTON, 30, 

54- 
Ainslie, Sir Ro- 
bert, 53. 
Albuquerque, 
136. 
Alisons "History of Europe," 

26. 
" Anti-jacobin," the, 31, 281. 
Aristophanes, 1 76, 1 77, rf sivpius. 
Arthur, Sir George, 337, 338. 
Avellaneda's continuation of 
" Don Quixote," 329. 

BAIRD, Sir David, 90, 94. 

Barbauld, Mrs., 11. 

Belmonte Palace, the, 183. 

Bentley, Dr., his disputes with 
the Fellows of Trinity, 5. 

Bernadotte, Marshal, 83. 

Berni, 164. 

Bloomfield, Robert, 151. 

Blucher, 158. 

Borg, Sir Vincent, a Maltese 
gentleman of the old school, 
264. 

Boringdon, Lord, 65. 

Botany Bay, 18. 

Bourrienne, 206. 

Brougham, Lord, his reminiscen- 
ces of Mr. Frere, 315, 343. 

Buonaparte, Joseph, made King 
of Spain, 78 ; flight from 
Madrid, 80, 81. 



Buonaparte, Napoleon, a phe- 
nomenon on which no man 
could have calculated, 26 ; 
prowess of, 36, 53, 70, 72, 75, 
79-82. See also Napoleon. 

Burke, Edmund, 27 ; saying of, 
210. 

Burrard, Sir Harry, 88. 

Byron, Lord, his "Childe 
Harold," 155, i56;his"Bep- 
po" an imitation of "Whistle- 
craft," 164 ; his " Don Juan" 
165, 167, 172-174, 254, 281. 

Calcagni, Abbate, his address 
to Lord Northwick, 225. 

Canning, George, at Eton with 
Mr. Frere, 13 ; anecdote of, 
17 ; his entrance into public 
life, 22 ; Pitt's interest in him, 
24, 28; eager to abolish slavery, 
3 1 j; his Introduction to the 
poetry of the "Anti-Jacobin," 
34 ; Foreign Under Secretaiy, 
40 ; removal to the Board of 
Trade, 41 ; his marriage, 46, 
47 ; his quarrel and duel with 
Lord Castlereagh, 146 ; inter- 
course with Mr. Frere, 181, 
182, 196 ; death of, 197 ; his 
character and career, 19S ; 
Mr. Frere's inscription for his 
monument, 200, 209 ; his skill 
in punctuation, 220, 263. 



35° 



INDEX. 



Capodieci, the antiquarian, 185. 
Carlisle, Earl of, play by, 52. 
Caruana, Roman Catholic bishop 

of Malta, 264. 
Cary, Rev. H. F., his translation 

of the "Birds" of Aristo- 
phanes, 193, 195. 
Casti, 164, 171. 
Castlereagh, Lord, 116, 146 ; at 

the European Congress, 147 ; 

reference to, in "Don Juan," 

174. 
Catchpole, Margaret, 323. 
Catholic Emancipation, 73. 
Cervantes, his " Don Quixote," 

166, 329. 
Chantrey, 203. 
Charles I., execution of, 37. 
Charles IV., of Spain, corrupt 

court and government of, 

55- 

Charmilly, Colonel de, 106. 

Chatterton, 175. 

Cid, poem of the, 84, 175, 179, 
193 ; quoted, 291. 

Cintra, Convention of, 145. 

Clark, Mr. G. T., his descrip- 
tion of Mr. Frere's house at 
Malta, 257. 

Clinton's " Fasti Hellenici," 
206, 275. 

Cochrane, Admiral, 62, 69. 

Coleridge, his translation of 
Schiller's " Piccolomini," 49; 
on " Whistlecraft," 172; de- 
sires to make Tieck and Mr. 
Frere acquainted, 1 79, 244 ; 
death of, 248 ; passage in his 
will, 249, 253, 296 ; verses 
on, 269. 

Constable, works of, 151. 

Cooper, Fenimore, 217. 

Cornvvallis, Miss, account of her 
conversation with Mr. Frere, 
164, 172. 

Cosway, his portrait of Lady 
Erroll, 162. 

Cowper, lines by, 27. 

Crabbe, poetiy of, 151. 

Cradock, Sir John, 123. 

Crome, works of, 151. 

Cuesta, obstinacy of, 128, 135. 



Dalrymple, Sir Hew, 80, 84, 

145- 
Darwin, 152, 281. 
Davies,Dr. ,head master of Eton, 

12, 15. 
Dee, Dr. John, his divining cup, 

285. 
Donne, Dr., his gift to friends, 

151- 

Dmry-lane Theatre on fire, 97. 
Dubarry, Madame, 206. 
Dundas (Lord Melville), 31, 73, 
74- 

Edgeworth, Miss, n ; her 
"Castle Rackrent," 49. 

Ellis's Specimens of the Early 
English Poets, 175. 

Emigration from Roydon, 210. 

Erroll, Countess Dowager of, 
67; married to Mr. Frere, 
161 ; her portrait painted by 
Cosway and Shee, 162 ; letter 
to George Frere, 180 ; her 
failing health and suffering 
from the English climate, 
182 ; death of, 228. 

Erskine, verses by, 152. 

Eye in Suffolk, priory of, I. 

Fenn, Lady, 10 ; her books for 

children, n, 27, 149. 
Fenn, Sir John, editor of the 

" Paston Letters," 11, 189. 
Feringhes, the, 337. 
Fontainebleau, Convention of, 

78. 
Foster, head master of Eton, 13. 
Fox, Mr. , scheme of, at the end 

of the American war, 333. 
French Revolution, the, 22, 24. 
Frere, Bartholomew, fifth brother 

of Mr. Hookham Frere, 42. 
Edward, Fellow of Trinity, 

an adherent of Bentley, 4. 

Edward, brother of Mr. 

Hookham Erere, 16, 261. 

Family, pedigree and 

genealogy of, 1-7. 

■ George, third brother of 

Mr. Hookham Frere, 60, 180. 



INDEX. 



351 



Frere, James Hatley (brother 
of Mr. Hookham Frere), 46, 
263. 

John (father of Mr. Hook- 
ham Frere), contends for the 
Senior Wranglership with 
Paley, 5 ; married to Jane 
Hookham, 6 ; elected mem- 
ber for Norwich, 8 ; his anti- 
quarian pursuits, 10 ; death 
of, 148. 

Frere, JOHN Hookham, birth 
and parentage, 1-11 ; at Eton, 
12 ; his friendship with Can- 
ning, 13; his papers in the 
" Microcosm," 14 ; at Cam- 
bridge, i8;entrance into public 
life, 20 ; member for West 
Looe, ib. ; visits France, 22 ; 
joins Canning and others in 
the "Anti-Jacobin," 31 ; ap- 
pointed Foreign Under Secre- 
tary, 41 ; Envoy to Lisbon, 48, 
52 ; transferred from Portugal 
to Spain, 54 ; his friendship 
with Romana, 56 ; return to 
England, 62, 63 ; and reception 
there, 64 ; his second mission 
to Spain, 82; consulted by Sir 
John Moore, 92 ; his reply, 93 ; 
employment of de Charmilly. 
106 ; misunderstanding and 
differences with Sir John 
Moore. 109 ; succeeded as 
British Minister in Spain by 
the Marquis Wellesley, 129 ; 
end of his active political 
career, 148 ; death of his 
father, id. ; life at Roydon, 
150; in London society, 151 ; 
sayings preserved, 152; marries 
Lady Erroll, 161 ; publishes the 
" Monks and the Giants," 163; 
at lirompton and Tunbridge 
Wells, 180 ; his wife's illness, 
182 ; sails for the Mediterra- 
nean, ib. ; arrival and settle- 
ment at Malta, 184 ; extracts 
from his letters, ib. ; short visit 
to England, 196 ; return to 
Malta, 197 ; loss of his friend 
Mr. Canning, 198 ; resumes his 



translation of ''Aristophanes," 
205 ; letters to his brothers,&c, 
210, sqq. ; makes a yachting 
trip to Marseilles, 227 ; death 
of his wife, 228 ; his Hebrew 
studies, 230 ; his " Frogs" of 
Aristophanes, 231 ; welcomes 
Sir Walter Scott to Malta, 
233; various letters, 237, sqq. ; 
his house at Malta described, 
257 ; death of his sister, 289 ; 
letters to his brothers, &c, 
290 ; publication of his Aristo- 
phanes, 296 ; his "Theognis" 
sent to press, 317 ; his illness 
and death, 338-339. 
Frere, Sheppard, 5. 

Susan, sister of Mr. Hook- 
ham Frere, 149, 156 ; death of, 
289 ; inscription on her tomb, 
292. 

Temple, brother of Mr. 

Hookham Frere, 149, 261. 

William, brother of Mr. 

Hookham Frere, 42, 155. 

Fryer, Dr., his travels in the East 
Indies, 3. 

Galt's novels, 330. 
Gell, Sir W., 270. 
"Gentleman's Magazine," 10. 
George III., his visits to Eton, 

13 ; his opposition to Reforms, 

29 ; and Pitt, 30. 
Gibbon, quoted, 336. 
Gifford, William, his connexion 

with the "Anti-Jacobin," 39 ; 

his editorship of the "Quarter 

ly Review," 177. 
Gillman's Life of Coleridge, 

quoted, 40. 
Graham's Island, 231. 
Grant, Sir Robert, his articles on 

Pitt and Fox in the " Quarter- 
ly Review," 178. 
" Gregory Griffin," 15. 
Grenville, Lord, at the Foreign 

Office, 20, 58. 
Guizot, 30. 

Hall, Captain Basil, 333. 
Hamilton, Sir Charles, 63. 



352 



INDEX. 



Havelock, Sir H., his account 
of the attack and capture of 
Ghuznee, 244. 

Hobhouse, Mr., and "Don 
Juan," 172. 

Holland House, 151, 153. 

Holland, Lord, at Corunna, 119 ; 
in Spain, 140 ; at Holland 
House, 153 ; dangerous illness 
of, 230. 

Homer, 156. 

Hook, Theodore, his " Life of 
Sir David Baird," quoted, 104, 
in. 

Hookham, Jane (mother of Mr. 
Hookham Frere), her character 
and gifts, 6 ; verses by, ib. ; let- 
ter to her son, 1 48; death of, 1 50. 

Horace, quoted, 224. 

Home, Bishop, anecdote of, 10. 

Jarvis, Sir John, 55. 
Jones of Nayland, 7, 344. 

Keats, Admiral, 86. 
Kett, the tanner, 288. 
Knife-Grinder, the Needy, 38. 

Lambton, General, 15. 

Lambton, Mr., 15. 

Leclerq's " Proverbes," 331. 

Lewis, Sir G. C, on the "Anti- 
Jacobin" parodies, 39; ap- 
pointed Commissioner to 
Malta, 273 ; his intercourse 
with Mr. Frere, 274; his 
notice of Mr. Frere's " Aris- 
tophanes," 280 ; and " Theog- 
nis," 319. 

Lockhart's "Life of Scott" 
quoted, 231, 278, 279. 

Lope de Vega, 330. 

Louis XVIIL, his departure 
from Dover, 157- 

Louis Philippe, 30. 

Machiavelli, 207. 
Mackintosh, Sir James, on "The 

Monks and the Giants," 166 ; 

on Mr. Frere's translations, 

175- 
Mallett, Robert, I. 



Malmesbury, Lord, his "Diary" 
quoted, 67 ; Mr. Hookham 
Frere's intercourse with him, 
69, 78. 

Malta, finally chosen by Mr. 
Frere as a residence, 180, 
183 ; his arrival and settle- 
ment there, 184 ; described, 
252 ; society of, 263. 

Marlborough, Duke of, 26. 

Marmora, Father, 266. 

Marten the regicide, 37. 

Maurice, Rev. F. D., book by 
him, 297 ; his earlier works, 

345- 

Mela victories, 44. 

Melville, Lord. See Dundas. 

Menander, 282. 

"Microcosm," the, 14, 15- 

Minto, Lord, 45, 48, 50. 

Mitchell's "Aristophanes," 177, 
179, 237, 280. 

Mole, Count, 29. 

Moliere, 332. 

Monge quoted, 35. 

"Monks and the Giants," the, 
163. 

Moore, Sir John, 87, 89, 92 ; mor- 
tally wounded at Corunna, 96 ; 
review of his campaign, 100. 

Moore, Thomas, on the "Anti- 
Jacobin," 41 ; "Journals" of, 
quoted, 152, 153, 172-173. 

Mornington, Lord. See Welles- 
ley. 

Mulgrave, Lord, 44. 

Midler on the Dorians, 208. 

Murray, Mr. John, 161. 

Napier's " Peninsular War," 
82. 

Napoleon, his meeting with the 
Emperor of Russia at Erfurth, 
81, 91 ; at Madrid, 92. See 
Buonaparte. 

Nelson, his daring at Copen- 
hagen, 21. 

Newman, John Henry, of Oriel, 
his meeting with Mr. Frere at 
Malta, 242. 

Ney, Marshal, trial of, 160. 

Niebuhr, 231. 



INDEX. 



353 



Norton, Mr. C. E., on "The 
Monks and the Giants," 170- 
172 ; on Mr. Frere's earlier 
experiments in translation, 
175 ; on "Aristophanes," 178, 
and "Theognis," 317. 

O'Conneix, Daniel, his elo- 
quence, 152. 

Orde, Lady, sister of Mr. Frere, 
48. 

Paley, his contest with John 
Frere for the Senior Wrangler- 
ship, 5. 

" Paston Letters," the, 10, 1S8. 

Peninsular War, 78, sqq. 

" Penrose's Journal," 331. 

Pickering, William, "a book- 
seller of curious books out of 
the common line," 296. 

Pindar, 185. 

Pitt, William, 20, 21, 24, 28, 
30 ; his reported cooperation 
in the "Anti-Jacobin," 39; 
at Canning's marriage, 47 ; 
his speech on the Spanish war 
quoted, 68 ; and Catholic 
Emancipation, 73 ; his labours, 

75- 
Pope's " Rape of the Lock," 166. 
Pulci's " Morgante Maggiore," 

164, 171. 
Punctuation, 220. 

" Quarterly Review," the, 

177, 178, 263, 319. 
Quinton, Mr., copies some family 

portraits of the Freres, 44. 

Reform, 235. 

Ritualism, 321. 

Robertson, an accomplished lin- 
guist, confidential mission of, 
84. 

Robinson, Henry Crabb, sent 
out to Corunna as corre- 
spondent of the "Times" 
newspaper, 90 ; his impression 
of Mr. Frere, 91 ; of Lord 
Holland, 1 19 ; invited by Cole- 



ridge to meet Tieck and Mr. 
Frere at Highgate, 179. 

Romana, Marquis de, 56 ; Mr. 
Frere's friendship for, id. ; 
death of, 143. 

Rose, William Stewart, his ad- 
dress to Mr. Frere on the 
"Monks and the Giants," 
164, 172, 190 ; his Epistle to 
Mr. Frere, 251. 

Rossetti, Gabriele, his "Spirito 
Antipapale," 210, 238, 240, 
243, 247. 

Royclon, 3, 149 ; emigration 
from, 210. 

Rudd's "Aristophanes," 179. 

Russell, Earl, on the Whigs and 
the Peninsular War, 119; in 
Spain with Lord Holland, and 
meets Mr. Frere, 140. 



Sadler on Pauperism, 230. 

Scott, Sir Walter, his supple- 
ment to "Sir Tristrem," 175; 
his admiration of Mr. Frere, 
176 ; his description of Gra- 
ham's Island, 231 ; his visit to 
Malta, 233. 

Sevigne, Madame de, Letters of, 
191. 

Shakespeare's "Hamlet," 329. 

Shee, Sir Martin Archer, his 
portrait of Lady Erroll, 162. 

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 82. 

Shuttleworth, Rev. Mr., story of, 

153- 
Sinking Fund, the, 25. 
Smith, Adam, writings of, 18, 

19- 

Smollett's novels, 329. 

Southey, Robert, his inscription 
on Marten the regicide, 37 ; 
his Peninsular War, 82, 1 12, 
132, 138, 142 ; letter to Lan- 
dor on Mr. Frere and Lord 
Byron, 165 ; on Mr. Frere's 
translations from the " Poem 
of theCid," 175; his "Chro- 
nicle of the Cid," 179, 186, 
187. 

Spanish fleet, the, 72. 

A A 



354 



INDEX. 



St. Simon, his story of the abbe 
and the snuff-box, 159. 

Stapleton's ' ' George Canning 
and his Times," quoted, 116. 

Swift, Dean, 331. 

Tacitus, his ignorance and 
mistakes about the Christians, 

333- 
Taylor, Isaac, his " Ancient 

Christianity," 297, 317; his 

" Spiritual Despotism," 321. 
" Theognis," 275, 318, 319. 
Thiers, 30. 
Ticknor, Mr., on Mr. Frere's 

version of the "Poem of the 

Cid," 175. 

Tieck, invited by Coleridge to 
Highgate to meet Mr. Frere, 
179 ; at Oxford, 180. 

Townsend, Rev. Charles, 251. 

Trimmer, Mrs., II. 

Upcott, William, 40. 

Vanbrugh, his "Provoked 

Wife," 37. 
Virgil, quoted, 216, 232. 

Walton, Izaak, his "Life of 
Dr. Donne " quoted, 151. 

Watson, bishop of Llandaff, his 
life quoted, 5. 



Welcker's "Theognis," 324. 

Wellesley, Marquis, at Eton, 15; 
selected as Mr. Frere's suc- 
cessor at Madrid, 97, 129 ; 
return to England, 143. 

Wellington, Duke of, flogged for 
a barring-out at Eton, 16, 26; 
sent to Portugal, 87 ; his In- 
dian Despatches, 117 ; at Lis- 
bon, 122, 127 ; military genius 
of, 134; his rampart lines at 
Torres Vedras, 143; his opinion 
of Romana, 144 ; unjust oppo- 
sition and clamour against, 
ib. ; with the Allied Sovereigns, 
158 ; his conduct in reference 
to Catholic Emancipation 
198. 

Wesley, John, preaches at Diss, 
10 ; Mr. Frere's admiration, 

of, 345- 
" Whistlecraft," pseudonym of 

Mr. Frere, 163, 178. 
"Whittingham's Memoirs," 132- 

133- 
Wilson, Sir Robert, 124. 
Wimbledon Church, reparation 

of, 30. 
Wolff, Rev. Joseph, Mr. Frere's 

interest in, 262, 266. 
Wordsworth, Dr. Christopher, 

bishop of Lincoln, 284, 293. 
Wyndham, Mr., 262. 



END OF VOL. I. 



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